


Swallow the Night

by ArwaMachine



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Dreams and Nightmares, Drunk Sex, Frottage, Have I mentioned Angst?, M/M, Masturbation, Mutual Pining, Pining, Public Sex, Sherlock (TV) Season/Series 04 Fix-it, Smut, The Stag Night (Sherlock: The Sign of Three), The Stag Night Fix-It (Sherlock: The Sign of Three), mostly canon compliant through series 3, playing fast and loose with how memories work, quite a bit of angst now that I think about it, toplock but please take my word for it that everyone involved has a perfectly nice time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:14:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 87,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26070979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwaMachine/pseuds/ArwaMachine
Summary: John’s stag-do doesn’t go as planned. Or--depending on how you look at it--it went exactly as planned. Life goes on, of course, but can it?
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 326
Kudos: 504
Collections: Sherlock and John Stories that Ease the Soul, Supernova Smut from Various Fandoms





	1. We'd Rather Walk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Do you know how long,” John panted, his cheek scraping against the wall, looking back at Sherlock through half-closed eyes, “I’ve wanted this?”
> 
> Sherlock pressed himself against John’s back, biting at John’s ear. “Not nearly as long as I have,” he whispered.

London at night was a kaleidoscope of swerving lights and bobbling shapes and streaks of colors, all swirling and twisting around with no semblance of reason or harmony. The lights and colors stood out from the dark of the sky and the shadows of the building, a contrast that kept the pupils constantly uncertain as to how much they ought to dilate so instead they did nothing. The result was a world that was not only spinning but also a bit fuzzy. It was all rather disorienting. How had Sherlock never noticed how disorienting London was at night? One would think he ought to have noticed it before. He was supposed to be clever.

“It’s a bit odd,” Sherlock said, because he wasn’t completely certain how to pronounce the word _disorienting_ , or if that word even meant what he thought it meant. He stumbled further down the pavement and gestured vaguely at everything. “That.”

John was next to him, lilting close to a store window as he tripped down the pavement. His eyes weren’t fully working, which was not a helpful way to go about walking. “Mmm,” he said.

“Wait,” Sherlock caught John’s arm. John blinked, snapping back awake. “We’re outside.”

John looked around, blinking some more.

The two of them were just in a flat. The ghost’s flat, the one who had been on a date with that woman. The nurse, the sad one. It was a strange flat. It was dark and it smelled funny and it had an egg-chair that made no sense. Sherlock also seemed to recall there being a skull. Why would there have been a skull? Was it one of his? And why weren’t they in the flat anymore, looking at the skull?

“Why aren’t we in the flat?” Sherlock asked. “Weren’t we just in a flat?”

John was still looking around, noticing also that the two of them were outside. “They were in a strop,” he said. He spoke as if his tongue wasn’t fully participating in speech production.

Sherlock didn’t quite remember that, although he had a vague image in his head of a red-faced man whose screaming voice floated to him as if through water. He wondered if this image was related to the reason he and John were outside now. “I wasn’t finished,” Sherlock said. “Wasn’t I?” He looked at John, who had leaned up against the side of a building. “Was I finished?”

John thought. He thought very hard. “I don’t know,” he said.

Sherlock turned around. The sudden motion did something awful to his sense of balance and he wavered, the world tilting around him. His eyes blurred and re-focused. “We’ll go back,” he said. “I’ll make my final deductions.”

John put an unsteady hand on Sherlock’s chest. “I think,” he said, “they wanted us to leave.”

“Nonsense,” Sherlock said, John’s hand nearly tipping him over. “Whatever would have given you that idea, my dear John?”

John pointed at a man standing at the end of the street. It was the red-faced man from the image in Sherlock’s head. His face was still red. His arms were crossed over his chest.

“ _If you come back to this flat_ ,” he shouted at them, “ _I’m calling the police_.”

“Ah,” said Sherlock.

“We should go,” John said, pushing Sherlock along in the other direction.

Sherlock’s feet felt very heavy and difficult to maneuver. “I know the police,” he whispered to John, leaning close to share this secret. Their shoulders bounced together.

“Yes,” said John, “you do.” He started giggling. “You know more police than anybody I’ve ever met.”

Sherlock started giggling as well. He wasn’t sure why he was giggling, but John was giggling and Sherlock found something about it funny. “You know the police too,” he reminded John.

“Yes,” John giggled, “I do.” He snorted. “They’ll be at my wedding.”

Something about this was more difficult for Sherlock to find funny. Instead, it made his stomach throb and gave him an awfully odd taste in his mouth.

No, wait.

Sherlock stopped them again, grabbing at John’s arm. John wavered under his grip, his legs not quite receiving the message that the top of him had stopped moving.

“Did I vomit?” Sherlock asked.

John considered. His eyes widened in recognition. “Yes,” he said, pointing a triumphant finger at Sherlock. “That’s why they were in a strop.” He seemed overjoyed at his deductions.

“Ah,” Sherlock said. Another mystery solved, then. He released John’s arm and dug into the pocket of his overcoat. His pocket seemed very deep, and he spun in a little circle as his hand searched for its prize. Finally, he pulled out a little green bottle, holding it up with a flourish. “Ah!”

John grabbed at his hand, examining the bottle. “Mouthwash?” he asked. He laughed again. “Why in the bloody hell do you have mouthwash?” He peered into Sherlock’s coat pocket. “Are you Mary Poppins?”

Sherlock pointed a finger at John’s face, but he was seeing a few different versions of John’s face floating in front of him at the moment and couldn’t be sure he was pointing at the correct one. “A best man,” he said, guessing that he ought to be pointing at the face on the right, “is always prepared.” With that, he unscrewed the cap to the bottle and took a long swig. He swished the liquid around his mouth and swallowed.

“Oi,” John said, grabbing the bottle from his hands. He was still laughing. “Don’t swallow it, you bloody idiot. There’s alcohol in there.”

Sherlock pointed at himself. “There’s alcohol in _here_ ,” he said.

John laughed again, a wheezing, breathy noise. He struggled valiantly to put the cap back on the little bottle of mouthwash. After several attempts, he was successful. He slipped the bottle back into Sherlock’s coat pocket but kept his hand inside, rummaging around.

“What else you got in these things?” he asked. He lifted out a little square device with a tube at one end. He held it up for Sherlock to see, his face a question mark.

“Breath…thingy,” Sherlock said. He couldn’t remember the full name. “It tells you about alcohol and…your blood.”

John snorted. “I’m pissed,” he said. “I don’t need to know how much.” He put the breathalyzer back into Sherlock’s pocket and continued rummaging around. He stepped closer, his hand sinking further into Sherlock’s pocket.

“Dental floss,” he said, pulling out items one by one. “Paracetamol. A…deck of cards?” He shrugged. “Right then.” He sank his free hand into Sherlock’s other pocket, stepping even closer as he dug through the items contained within. “Cigars?” He raised an eyebrow at Sherlock. “Neither of us smokes cigars.”

Sherlock shrugged. “A best man is always prepared.”

“Why’ve you got all this?” John asked, laughing as he pulled what appeared to be a spare necktie from Sherlock’s pocket.

Sherlock stumbled forward slightly as John’s hand tugged back into his pockets. He felt a bit like he was being searched by the police. He knew the police. “A best man—“

“No no,” John laughed. “Why’ve you got these things? Why’ve you got a deck of cards and dental floss and a necktie and…” his fingers landed on something else in Sherlock’s pockets and his mouth fell open. He pulled the items—little foil packets, the indentation of a perfect circle inside of each—from Sherlock pockets and gaped at them. “ _Condoms_?”

Sherlock looked away sheepishly. “I asked the internet,” he said.

John seemed to have forgotten that he had asked Sherlock a question. “You brought _condoms_?”

Sherlock cleared his throat. “The internet said to bring condoms to a stag-do,” he said. “I checked several lists. It was on all of them.” He looked at John gravely. “The _internet_ , John.”

“Right,” John said. “But you knew it was just going to be the two of us tonight?”

“I did think it was odd,” Sherlock said. The various versions of John’s faces were slowly merging back into just the one face, so he had a clearer idea of which one he ought to be looking at. “But it was on the internet. On all the lists.”

John looked up at Sherlock and a smile cracked across his face. He erupted into laughter, loud and lovely. “You,” he said, his hazy eyes finding their focus as they gazed into Sherlock’s, “are mad. You are barking mad.” He slipped the condoms back into Sherlock’s pockets but kept his hands inside, not searching for anything, just resting. Sherlock realized that his hands were on John’s elbows. John didn’t seem to mind.

“ _Oi_ ,” a voice shouted from down the block. “ _Keep moving, you two. Get the hell out of here_.”

Sherlock glanced towards the noise. It appeared to still be the red-faced man.

“Where did he come from?” Sherlock asked.

John considered the man. He looked back at the building behind them. He looked at the street sign to their left. “I don’t think,” he said, “we’ve gone very far.”

“ _That’s it_ ,” the red-faced man yelled. “ _I’m calling the police_.”

“ _We know the police_ ,” Sherlock yelled back, staggering towards the man. John tugged at his coat, doing his best to hold him back. He was not being very successful.

The man dropped his arms to his side and started charging towards them. His face was very red indeed, and his hands were fists.

John tugged harder at Sherlock’s coat. “Shit,” he laughed.

Sherlock turned, grabbing John’s hand in his. “ _Run, John_!” he cried, tugging John along behind him as he raced away from the red-faced man. Running was a trick. The streets spun around him and the lights were dancing, bobbing and weaving in the air as the two men careened down the pavement, not noticing the street that they crossed without looking or the two cabs that nearly hit them as they did so. Sherlock heard the blast of the horn somewhere in the distance and he looked for it in the sky and collided with John’s body, nearly sending the both of them to the ground. Running was a trick indeed, and a bit too difficult of a trick at the moment. Sherlock spied an alley to their right and pulled John into it, vaguely registering John’s little _oof_ as his arm was unceremoniously yanked to the side.

John collapsed against the wall of the alley, breathless and laughing. He was still clutching Sherlock’s hand in his. Sherlock grinned at him. The world was hazy and throbbing around the both of them but Sherlock had forgotten about the whole of it in seconds. John’s hair was rumpled and his shirt had come untucked, top buttons undone and the collar askew.

“You’re a right mess,” John said.

Sherlock’s brow furrowed. “ _I’m_ a right mess?”

John was still laughing. “Sherlock Holmes,” he said, “can’t handle his alcohol.”

Sherlock stepped closer to John. He poked a finger into John’s chest. “John Watson,” he said, “can’t handle _his_ alcohol.”

“Yeah?” John’s grin was spread across the whole of his face. “I’m not the one getting us kicked out of client’s flats, passing out on the floor.”

“I didn’t _pass out_.”

“You passed out,” John giggled. “Sherlock Holmes. Famous consulting detective.”

“World’s only consulting detective,” Sherlock corrected, his finger still jabbing into John’s chest.

“ _World’s only_ consulting detective,” John said. “Pissed drunk. Passed out on the floor of a client’s flat. With his arse in the air.”

Sherlock let his mouth drop open. “I did _not_.”

“You should just be lucky I didn’t take pictures,” John said. “I bet I could’ve gotten some good money for those down at the station.”

Sherlock’s finger was digging a divot into the fabric of John’s jumper. “You wouldn’t have.”

John caught Sherlock’s finger in his hand, closing his fist around the digit. “Or maybe I would’ve just kept them for myself,” he grinned.

Sherlock took another step forward. John’s hand remained wrapped around his finger, pressing it to his chest. He could feel the drum of John’s heartbeat beneath it. His other hand still grasped John’s down at their sides. Sherlock’s ears felt fuzzy and he was vaguely aware that his brain was set to a buzzing autopilot, taking action without checking with Sherlock first. “And just what would you have done with those photographs, John?” Sherlock asked. His voice barely seemed his own. It seemed to belong to someone crooning, seductive.

John’s head tilted back against the brick wall of the alley. He looked up at Sherlock through half-closed eyes, little smile still stretched across his parted lips. “What do you think?” he asked, his voice a challenge. “You’re the world’s only consulting detective. Make a deduction.”

Sherlock’s brain made a play at deductions, but its wheels moved slowly, as if through mud. He could see the disparate bits of John’s face floating in front of him—hooded eyes, pupils dilated, labored breathing, pulse pounding and thudding at John’s neck—but couldn’t make very much out of what it all might mean other that what Sherlock wanted it to mean. He found that he wanted it to mean quite a bit at the moment. His mouth suddenly felt dry.

“You’d look at them, of course,” Sherlock said. It was a rather obvious thing to say. The wheels in his head skidded over a puddle.

“Not a very clever deduction, that,” John said. His thumb stroked at the side of Sherlock’s finger.

Sherlock was surprised to find that his breathing had quickened. He wondered what that was all about. While he wondered, words formed in his mind and soared out his mouth without him noticing. “You’d look at them often, wouldn’t you?” Sherlock heard himself say.

John shrugged, a playful gesture. “You tell me.”

“When you’re all alone,” Sherlock continued. “Late at night. No one around to see you.”

The side of John’s smile twitched upward even further.

“No one around to see you touch yourself,” Sherlock said. His voice was quiet, but his and John’s faces were quite close to each other now so it was no matter.

John licked his lips. “Would I have?” he asked, his voice just as low as Sherlock’s. “Touched myself?”

“Certainly,” said Sherlock. Someone’s heart was thudding in his ears. “But a question remains, John.”

“Oh?” John’s eyes had dropped to Sherlock’s lips.

“What would you think about,” Sherlock asked, “while you were touching yourself?”

“What indeed,” John said.

“Would you think of me?” Sherlock asked.

John’s hand gripped tight to Sherlock’s, pressing the palm of his hand flat against his chest. John’s heart pounded madly against Sherlock’s hand. Sherlock could feel the world thundering around him, a throb of pulse.

“Would you think of me,” Sherlock continued, “with my arse in the air?”

John’s exhales were shaky things, shuddering with a fog of alcohol.

“Would you think of all the things,” Sherlock said, his voice barely even a whisper, “all the many things you want to do to my arse?”

John released Sherlock’s hand.

“No,” he said.

He gripped Sherlock’s face, wrapping his palm against Sherlock’s jaw in a tight grip.

“I’d think of all the things I want you to do to mine,” he growled.

He dragged Sherlock’s mouth onto his with a hungry noise.

For a moment, Sherlock forgot how to do everything. He forgot how to breathe, how to think, how to move his limbs, how to work his mouth. He was a white ball of panic who had forgotten how to do anything except exist with John’s mouth pressed to his. Then he remembered. He surged forward against John, grabbing at the lapels of John’s jacket and pressing their bodies together. John’s lips parted against Sherlock’s and then Sherlock was tasting him, tongues tangling together. John tasted of whiskey and vanilla and a taste that was uniquely John, a taste that Sherlock had previously only imagined. John’s hands were gripping Sherlock’s face, winding into his hair, pulling him closer, closer. Someone was moaning and Sherlock realized that it was him.

“God,” John panted as they separated. He was gasping for air but he only had a moment before Sherlock was on him again, their mouths so wide it was as if they were attempting to devour the other in a single swallow and might actually succeed. The whole of London dropped away around them, the alleyway and the honking street and the kaleidoscope of lights and the red-faced man vanishing into nothingness as they writhed against each other, mouths moving as if one could make up for lost time by enthusiasm alone.

Sherlock rolled his hips forward, feeling the press of John’s erection through his trousers. John gasped against Sherlock’s mouth, momentarily forgetting how to return his kisses. Sherlock moved his lips to John’s neck, sucking and biting at the warm skin as he ground himself harder against John. Their bodies pressed together but not close enough, somehow not close enough.

Sherlock gripped John’s arse, lifting him up, pressing John into the brick wall behind them. John moaned in assent and wrapped his legs around Sherlock’s waist, his fingers digging into the fabric of Sherlock’s coat. From this angle, Sherlock had easier access to John’s jaw, his neck, his collarbone, and he made good use of this privilege, his tongue moving across every plane of skin he could reach. He could feel John’s pulse pounding through the veins in his neck and he sunk his teeth into the spot, listening to John gasp into his hair. Sherlock rolled his hips forward again and John cried out, his head hitting the wall with a dull thunk. Sherlock repeated the movement, shuddering slightly as he felt his erection rub against John’s through their trousers.

John grasped Sherlock’s face, pulling Sherlock’s lips away from his neck and back to his mouth. What they were doing now was messy and uncoordinated and could only be called kissing in the loosest possible definition, sloppy movements full of breath and moans and tongues. Sherlock was thrusting against John, shoving his body harder against the wall with each grind of their hips, John’s breath leaving him with each harsh movement.

Everything was hazy and useless except for the noises John was making against him, the insistent throb of Sherlock’s erection in his trousers. He rutted up against John, needing more, needing it immediately. He let his hands travel inward against John’s arse, pressing a finger against the warm center of John through his trousers. John made a whimpering noise.

“I don’t suppose,” John gasped into Sherlock’s mouth, “you brought any lube in those Mary Poppins pockets of yours.”

Sherlock thought, which was a monumental task at the moment. He remembered.

He grinned.

“Christ,” John moaned against him, his lips spreading into a smile. “You really are a bloody genius.”

Sherlock shifted his weight against John, pressing him against the wall with a shoulder while he dug madly through his coat pocket with his free hand. His stag-do supplies flew out of his coat left and right, breathalyzers and cigars and spare neckties and a deck of cards scattering across the alleyway like bits of debris. John laughed into Sherlock’s ear, a sweet, breathy sound.

Sherlock found the little bottle and clamped it between his teeth, grinning at John triumphantly. He shifted John’s weight against the wall once again, scrambling at John’s flies with his free hand. He tugged John’s trousers as far down his arse as he could with John’s legs still wrapped around him. He couldn’t get them down particularly far, but it would be far enough.

“Sherlock...” John giggled. He looked as if he were about to suggest a shift in positions, but then Sherlock ripped the cap off of the bottle of lube with his teeth, meeting John’s eyes with a hungry stare. He worked the lube over his fingers with a somewhat complicated, one-handed maneuver, and then both hands were back on John’s arse, a slick finger against John’s hole.

“Christ,” John gasped, wriggling his legs around Sherlock’s waist as Sherlock hoisted him higher against the wall, slipping the very tip of his finger inside John. John’s mouth fell open and his eyes fell shut and he relaxed his thighs around Sherlock’s waist, sinking himself down onto Sherlock’s finger. He moved slowly, his muscles clenching and relaxing against Sherlock, warring against the intrusion. When Sherlock’s finger was fully inside John, John made a low noise, his eyes still shut and his head tipped back against the wall, and Sherlock stared up at him as if he was the only thing Sherlock could see, which was rather true at the moment. Sherlock put his lips to John’s jaw and he felt John smile before he saw it. He moved his finger inside of John, feeling John relax around him, and John gasped, rolling his hips against Sherlock. John’s mouth found Sherlock’s again and he clenched his legs around Sherlock’s waist, an uncoordinated effort to meet each stroke of his finger.

“More,” he moaned into Sherlock’s mouth. “Christ, Sherlock. I need more.”

Sherlock bit at John’s lip and complied, withdrawing just long enough to slip a second finger inside. John made a moaning noise and his mouth stopped working against Sherlock’s, panting little gasps across his face. Sherlock grinned and sucked at John’s lower lip and crooked his fingers forward, finding just the spot.

“ _Fuck_.” John’s entire body shuddered and his hips started moving again, grinding against Sherlock’s hand. “That. Again. That. _God_.”

“God yes,” Sherlock gasped, moving his fingers inside of John just right, just so. John cried out and Sherlock moved his hand faster, fucking John with his fingers while John bounced his hips against him, shaking and panting and saying Sherlock’s name in little broken gasps, one syllable at a time. Sherlock caught John’s mouth in his and John wrapped his fingers into Sherlock’s hair and sunk himself into Sherlock’s kiss and then there was nothing but this. No stag-do, no wedding, no invitations and seating charts and lilac dresses and extended family members and certainly no _Mary_. Only this, only the two of them, pissed drunk and pressed against a brick wall in a dirty alleyway, grinding and panting like teenagers. All Sherlock could feel was John against him, all he could taste was John’s tongue on his, all he could hear was the whimpering noises John made as Sherlock’s fingers moved and stroked inside him. John’s cock had nudged his way out of its pants and was pressed against his stomach, red and leaking. Sherlock wished he had more than just the two hands. He was so hard he hurt.

“I want,” Sherlock growled, his teeth against the skin of John’s jaw, “to fuck you.”

“ _Yes_ ,” John breathed. “Yes. God yes. God, Sherlock. Please.” His hands were anywhere on Sherlock he could reach. His voice was ragged and desperate. “Please fuck me.”

Sherlock withdrew his fingers and lowered John off of him. Both their legs, it would seem, were a bit unsteady. John pulled at the lapels of Sherlock’s coat, dragging his mouth back onto his in an uncoordinated kiss. John licked and bit at Sherlock’s lips as Sherlock dug through his pockets, searching for a condom. His fingers landed on the foil packet and he grinned against John’s mouth. _A best man is always prepared, indeed._

Sherlock grabbed John by the arm and whipped him around, slamming his chest against the wall. John caught himself with his hands, gasping at the sudden change in position. Sherlock had his cock out of his trousers and the condom on in seconds. Each moment he wasn’t inside of John was, in his opinion, a useless moment. He tugged John’s trousers down his thighs, exposing his arse, still shimmering with lube.

“Do you know how long,” John panted, his cheek scraping against the wall, looking back at Sherlock through half-closed eyes, “I’ve wanted this?”

Sherlock pressed himself against John’s back, the length of his cock running along the cleft of John’s arse. He bit at John’s ear. “Not nearly as long as I have,” he whispered.

The bottle of lube had ended up on the floor of the alley, just by the spare necktie. There was blessedly just enough left for Sherlock to slick his cock and pour the remaining on his fingers. He slipped two fingers back inside John, moving inside of him, making sure he was good and wet. He crooked his fingers forward once more, mouthing at John’s neck.

“Christ, Sherlock,” John cried, bucking against him. “ _Now_.”

Sherlock lined his cock against John’s entrance, making little circles around John’s hole, teasing him. John made an impatient noise and shoved his hips backwards, sinking his arse onto the head of Sherlock’s cock. John gasped and his eyes widened, his fingernails scratching into the rough brick in front of him. Sherlock slid further into John and John’s head tipped forward, forehead smacking against the wall.

“Good Christ,” John was muttering. “Good Christ in heaven…”

“Good?” Sherlock asked, but it was. It was so good, the best thing Sherlock had ever felt. It was better than all the nicotine patches in the world, it was better than any cocaine he had ever tried, it was even better than solving a case, a locked-door one, at that. John was hot and tight against him, and he could feel every little shudder of his body, every sharp intake of breath ripping through John and into Sherlock. It was nearly too much and Sherlock was dangerously close to coming already.

“Good,” John said, moving himself back until his arse settled against Sherlock’s hips. John’s face was flushed red, a sheen of sweat glinting on his forehead. “God, Sherlock,” he gasped, moving his hips ever so slightly. “Oh my God.”

“Good,” Sherlock said. Slowly, so slowly, he withdrew his cock from John, slipping back inside at an agonizing pace. John sucked in a ragged breath, his head dropping lower against the wall. Sherlock heard a moan escape his own lips, an involuntary noise that seemed to come from a part of himself with whom Sherlock was not particularly well-acquainted. Again he sank into John and again that part of himself moaned; there was a correlation there but Sherlock didn’t care one bit. John felt too good. “Fuck,” he muttered, squeezing his eyes closed. He couldn’t look at John, not when John’s arsehole was stretched around his cock, not if he didn’t want to come immediately and with a scream sure to wake the whole of London.

“ _Sherlock_ ,” John groaned, pushing back against the wall to move himself against Sherlock. His voice, rough and broken, was a command. _Move. Fuck me. Now_.

Sherlock ran his hands down John’s back, bowed and heaving. He could feel John’s heartbeat thudding through his ribs, through his rumpled jumper, through his jacket that was a bit tattered from being ground against the wall. His hands slipped lower and he wrapped around John’s hips, still writhing against him in desperation. He gripped John hard and, with as much strength as he could muster, thrust into John with enough force as to nearly send him toppling into the wall.

John’s mouth dropped open and he cried out, his eyes practically rolling back in his head. He pressed his arms against the wall, bracing himself as Sherlock began to fuck him with abandon, the sound of Sherlock’s pelvis slapping against John’s arse sounding through the dark of the alleyway. John sounded as if he couldn’t breathe quite right and Sherlock seemed to be having trouble with his breath as well, sucking in air faster than his lungs could process it, leaving everything dizzy and burning. He pounded harder into John, but it somehow wasn’t hard enough, wasn’t close enough. Sherlock felt as if he could crawl inside of John and it somehow still wouldn’t be close enough.

Sherlock shifted the angle and his cock slid into John just so and John made a noise that sounded as if he was dying and his legs almost went out from under him.

“ _There_ ,” John gasped in a voice Sherlock had never heard before, had never even imagined. “ _That_. Christ, _Sherlock_.” John pushed himself against the wall, his body meeting Sherlock’s thrusts with fervor. Sweat soaked his hair and dripped down his forehead and the whole of his body was shaking. Sherlock couldn’t keep his eyes off him—John was the only thing of interest in the universe at the moment.

Someone was calling out John’s name in a voice that was guttural and unfamiliar and barely intelligible, the wrecked cries of a man so gone that he could barely breathe. Sherlock figured it was him, as John seemed lost in his own sounds at the moment, crying and grunting and panting and calling out broken-off commands to Sherlock, pieces of words ricocheting through the alley _—faster_ and _there_ and _god_ and _Sherlock_ and _don’t stop don’t you dare stop_.

Everything was building to a breaking point and Sherlock felt as if he were a crisis incarnate, a tank full of petrol with its brake lines severed, careening straight towards a wall. An explosion was imminent, and it would take out the whole of the block. Nothing would survive. John wailed beneath him.

Sherlock couldn’t form words. He wasn’t particularly sure he understood English anymore. Every part of his body was burning and building and he needed to warn John but he couldn’t find the words so instead he found a noise, a high, desperate noise that sounded like a siren and bounced along the walls of the alleyway.

John understood. He took his cock in his hand—straining and leaking and seemingly seconds away from coming untouched—and stroked viciously at himself, his arm moving in time with Sherlock’s thrusts.

“ _Yes_ ,” John moaned. His body was shaking, every muscle tight, ready, close. His hand moved furiously over his cock. “God yes. _Sherlock_.”

Sherlock felt John clench and shake around his cock as he stroked himself closer to orgasm and couldn’t hold on any longer. He shuddered and screamed and drove himself into John in frantic, rhythmless thrusts and the world exploded and Sherlock came so hard he saw spots. He fell forward against John, gripping at his chest as he moved, each stroke of his cock inside of John making him twitch and cry and then John was there, bucking against him, shaking and sobbing and spurting streaks of come all over the wall and the ground and his own hand. It was all there was and all there needed to be. It was perfect.

Sherlock wrapped both of his arms around John’s chest and pressed his forehead to John’s back and John supported their weight on his forearm, his hand still lazily stroking his cock, whimpering quietly. Sherlock could feel John’s heart thundering against his cheek and was certain that John could feel his as well. The both of them were pulsing and raw, giving off so much heat it felt as if they might send steam into the night air.

“That was,” John breathed, “amazing.”

Sherlock withdrew his cock with a little gasp from the both of them and tossed the spent condom to the side, where it landed partially on the deck of cards. John turned himself around, leaning against the wall and looking up at Sherlock through hooded eyes, his chest still heaving.

“Yes it was,” Sherlock said, pressing a kiss to John’s parted lips.

John made a murmuring noise against him. “Messy, though,” he said, his lips twitching into a smile.

Sherlock raised a finger. He reached into his pockets and produced a handkerchief.

John smiled. “Always prepared,” he said.

“Always prepared,” Sherlock replied.

John made a fumbling attempt at cleaning himself off and the handkerchief was tossed to the side, where it landed on top of the condom. John sank back against the wall, finally on his way to catching his breath. Sherlock’s legs felt as if they were recently removed of their bones and he could feel the exhaustion of the evening creeping in from all sides, the world dull and fading around him. He had a wordless glimmer of a thought that perhaps he and John ought to find a way back to Baker Street but then John smiled up at him, a beaming smile that erased every thought Sherlock had in his head. Sherlock stepped into John’s body and cradled that smile in his hands.

“You’re amazing,” John whispered against his lips.

Sherlock sank his mouth into John’s and John made a contented noise and slid his hands around Sherlock’s waist and then Sherlock wasn’t aware of anything else, not the hum of the city around them, not the honks and screeches of cars passing by, not the hoots and jeers from the pedestrians and flat-dwellers in the area, not the red and blue lights flickering onto their faces from the police car parked at the end of the alley, and certainly not the uncomfortable shouts of the policeman, trying to get their attention as he slowly approached.

However, the world always makes itself known at some point.

“This is preposterous,” Sherlock said once he and John were handcuffed in the back of the police car. Or at least he tried to say this; the word _preposterous_ didn’t come out quite right. “I know the police.”

“Right,” one of the officers at the front of the car said.

John nudged him with a shoulder and giggled. “Handcuffs,” he said.

“I’m the world’s only consulting detective,” Sherlock said. “Sherlock Holmes. And this is Doctor John Watson.”

John’s head snapped up. “Present,” he said.

“Well,” the officer said. “World’s only consulting detective Sherlock Holmes and Doctor John Watson received a staggering number of complaints tonight. Disorderly conduct. Indecent exposure. Lewd acts in a public area.” He glanced back at them through the partition. “I can go on.”

“Detective Inspector Lestrade,” Sherlock said, each word somehow more challenging to pronounce than the next. “He’ll set the matter straight. Call him.”

The police laughed to themselves up front. “Not exactly his division, this.”

“Call him,” Sherlock said.

John tipped to the side, resting his head against Sherlock’s shoulder. “I think I’ll have a little kip,” he said. “Wake me when we get to Baker Street.”

Sherlock felt John’s rumpled hair brush his neck, his body relaxing against Sherlock’s with a deep sigh. Sherlock was still angry about something but he was having difficulty remembering exactly what. His own eyelids were heavy and the world was slow and warm around him. He rested his cheek against John’s head and felt John burrow closer, smiling. Sherlock found himself smiling as well. A kip might be nice, then. He closed his eyes. He could sort all of this out later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading!
> 
> A message from Past Arwa: This work is a PWP for the moment, but I've started outlining some additional chapters and real fun places it could go. Check back if you want to see what happens next! I'll post any updates on my Tumblr - arwamachine.tumblr.com
> 
> A MESSAGE FROM FUTURE ARWA: I HAVE WRITTEN MORE CHAPTERS! If you are happy with chapter 1 as-is, you are free to stop here. However, if you would like to see what comes next for these two crazy kids, I welcome you to read on!
> 
> The title is adapted from a lyric in "Rain Dogs," by Tom Waits, which I feel kinda fits the mood here.
> 
> I love you all.
> 
> Hearts,  
> Arwa


	2. Inside a Broken Clock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something he ought to remember, something of some sort of significance.

John drifted back into consciousness with the recognition that every part of his body hurt. His neck was twisted, his shoulders were stiff, his legs felt as if they’d been stretched beyond their capacity, and his back was complaining at him very loudly. Even his arse was sore; John was not particularly sure what that was all about. All of that was dwarfed in comparison to his head, which was practically screaming at him, a fuming tirade echoing between his temples that would make a sailor blush. He wasn’t completely sure he still had a brain hiding somewhere between his ears—everything felt dried up and worthless at the moment. His mouth was the bloody Sahara; he would have murdered a small child for a glass of water. John pulled his eyes open and immediately regretted the decision. The room was white and glinting and bright, too bright, impossibly bright for whatever time of day it was. John had no idea what time of day it could possibly be.

He also had absolutely no idea where he was.

He figured he ought to be worried about that but couldn’t quite work up the effort.

He forced his eyes open again and grit his teeth as his head lodged several loud complaints over his decision. He blinked. He blinked again. The room was small and bare, white tile lining the walls. John’s back was pressed to the wall, his legs splayed out in front of him. The floor was cold and hard and unforgiving, which, John reasoned, was likely why his arse felt a bit sore at the moment. He drew his knees up to his chest and winced. Yes, his arse was apparently quite unhappy about the sleeping arrangements for the night.

He tilted his head to the side and spied the barest bones of a bed at the end of the room. Sherlock was sprawled on the bed, his head lilted to the side, his curls a frizzy mess. His chest rose and fell heavily; he was in a deep sleep.

A holding cell. They were in a holding cell at Scotland Yard.

“Fucking _hell_ ,” John said, then clutched at his head, which informed him that it had not given him permission to speak at such a volume. How in the name of Christ had they ended up in a holding cell at Scotland Yard?

“Sherlock,” John said as loudly as his head would permit him, which was barely above a whisper.

Sherlock didn’t move.

“ _Sherlock_ ,” John said, a bit louder. His head snapped at him.

Sherlock muttered something. It was unclear if he was awake.

“Christ,” John said, rubbing his hands over his eyes. “What the hell did we get into last night?” He tried to think on it, but the brain that he may or may not still have was comatose. He remembered pints, and later whiskey, but at the memory of pints and whiskey his stomach performed a little acrobatic trick and he decided that he was done trying to remember anything at the moment. It seemed that the best course of action was to remain very, very still and very, very quiet.

Then Lestrade erupted into the room and began yelling at them.

Despite Lestrade’s insistence on being the loudest human to ever enter a room, he had managed to drop whatever charges were placed against them and John and Sherlock were free to go. Lestrade was grinning at them rather oddly the whole of the morning. This would have made John wonder just what exactly the two of them had gotten into the night before, but wondering would have taken up much too much energy from a brain that was currently solely focused on helping John stand upright and walk without being sick everywhere.

“Do you remember anything from last night?” John asked Sherlock as the two of them looked for a cab outside of New Scotland Yard. The street was impossibly loud. How had John never noticed how bloody loud London was?

“Tessa,” Sherlock said, waving down a taxi. “She went on a date with a ghost. Apparently several other women have as well.” He shook his head. “Something there, I think.”

“Right,” John said, rubbing at his temples. That’s right, the two of them ended up getting a case. He barely remembered being in the ghost’s flat, if he was being honest. All he could conjure up were hazy images flickering briefly in his mind before vanishing. A strange-looking chair. Dark walls. A…skull? Sherlock on the carpet, for some reason.

Sherlock grabbed John’s arm. His brow furrowed. “Did I vomit?” he asked.

John thought. He thought very hard. He came up with nothing. “I have no idea,” he said.

Sherlock released his arm as a cab pulled up in front of them. “I’m sure I didn’t,” he said. “My calculations for alcohol intake were iron-clad.”

John had a snippet of a memory of spiking Sherlock’s drink. He chose to keep that memory to himself.

The cab ride back to Baker Street seemed louder and bumpier than ever before, leaving John to wonder if he had somehow missed the memo that all the streets were simultaneously torn up and everyone in the city agreed to honk and shout at this exact hour. If Sherlock was bothered by any of it, he didn’t let on, seemingly in his own world as he stared out the window. Probably in his Mind Palace, John thought, already halfway to solving that ghost case from the night before.

John couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something he ought to remember, something of some sort of significance. It felt as if the memory was just out of reach, an object on a too-high shelf, and every time John strained his fingertips at it he only pushed it further away.

He gave up. If the memory was important enough, it would come back to him.

* * * 

When John returned home to his flat much later that afternoon, Mary was having a cup of tea at the kitchen table, lazily flipping through a magazine. She smiled at him as he entered. He had done a bit of washing up and recovery while Sherlock busied himself with the ghost case back at Baker Street, but he still felt a bit like a dusty shoe, worn and useless.

“Did you and Sherlock have a good time last night?” Mary asked him.

John tried to piece together the bits of memory he collected to form an accurate evaluation of the evening. “Yes,” he decided. “I think. It’s a bit of a blur, actually.”

Mary grinned. “I hate to tell you this, Doctor Watson,” she said, “but you might be a bit too old to drink like a teenager.”

“Agreed,” John said. He scratched at his head, looking away. “Um,” he said. “In the interest of honesty. And since we’re to be married soon…”

Mary narrowed her eyes at him. “Out with it.”

“Sherlock and I,” John said, “may have gotten arrested.”

Mary’s eyes widened and her laugh rang through the room like a gunshot. John felt the sound poke at what was left of his headache.

“It’s all okay,” he said quickly. “Lestrade cleared the charges. We’re good. Don’t even have to show for court. I just,” he nodded at her, “thought you should know. Honest communication between husband and wife. That sort of thing.”

Mary was still laughing. “What did the two of you do, anyway? To get yourselves arrested?”

“Right,” John said, looking at his feet. “The thing is, I can’t exactly remember.”

Another one of Mary’s gunshot-laughs ricocheted through the room.

“My,” she said, looking impossibly amused, “the two of you really _did_ have a good time last night.”

John was a bit relieved that Mary found this story amusing, the story where her fiancé went out with his best friend, got shit-faced, and got himself arrested. He had envisioned himself sleeping on the sofa for a bit and, honestly, wouldn’t have thought any less of her for it.

“Knowing Sherlock,” John said, “he probably said the wrong thing to the wrong person and got himself in a fight.”

“And knowing you,” Mary said, standing up and walking to John, draping her arms over his shoulders, “you probably jumped to his aid without thinking and got _yourself_ in a fight.”

John wrapped his arms around her waist. “That sounds about right.”

“Well, husband-to-be,” Mary smiled at him, “all I ask is that you keep the future arrests to an absolute minimum. If you can possibly help it.” She sniffed, her nose wrinkling. “And maybe have a shower.”

John smiled. “I think I can manage both those things.”

When John finished washing up, committed to not asking himself how he got dirt in some rather more delicate places, he found Mary examining the jacket he wore the night before. She held it up, a confused look on her face.

“What happened here?” she asked, gesturing at the back of the jacket. The fabric was nearly tattered, scratched to pieces and torn in more than a few areas. It looked as if it had been dragged repeatedly over a jagged surface.

John rubbed the fabric between his fingers, his brow furrowed. “Haven’t the foggiest,” he said.

“Did you get dragged on the ground?” Mary asked. “During the fight?” This hypothesized fight, apparently, was rapidly becoming the accepted explanation for what had gotten the two of them arrested.

John shrugged. “I suppose so,” he said. He considered. “My arse is a bit sore. Maybe I got knocked over.”

Mary chuckled, her face sheer amusement. “It would seem your bar fighting days are behind you, Doctor Watson.”

John raised his eyebrows, letting out a breathy laugh. “Here’s hoping,” he said. He studied the tattered jacket for another moment before tossing it in the bin. It was fairly well ruined. Pity, John thought, it was one of his better jackets.

* * *

By the next day, John’s hangover had dissipated and he let what memories he could gather from his stag-do be what they were. What he remembered, he remembered. What he couldn’t remember, he couldn’t remember. He decided it was best that way—stories of drunken shenanigans were embarrassing enough when he was a youth, and surely became all the more embarrassing now that he was a middle-aged man. Perhaps not remembering very much about his inebriated behavior was a blessing in disguise. Since he and Mary’s hypothesis that Sherlock’s proclivity for angering strangers seemed to be a high-probability reason for their arrest, this was the story he went with whenever one of Mary’s friends giggled and said to him _so I hear you got arrested at your stag-do_. The ones who knew anything about Sherlock also agreed that the story made quite a bit of sense.

Sherlock begrudgingly gave up on the ghost case—now referred to as the Mayfly Man—after hitting a series of dead ends. He tried to arrange another visit to the ghost’s flat, but apparently the landlord wouldn’t let either of them back. Sherlock pouted briefly and then turned his attention to other cases, allowing John to write up the Mayfly Man case for the blog.

“Documenting it as one of my rare failures,” he reminded John.

“Of course,” John said, and managed to cobble together enough of his intact memories to produce a somewhat coherent post.

It was at a crime scene for a different case that John had an unusual interaction. The case was a fairly interesting one, a murder with quite a bit of blood, although as soon as Sherlock arrived on the scene he labeled the entire ordeal so simplistic as to be insulting. Sherlock was off somewhere, seemingly with the sole intention of making one of the forensic officers cry, when Lestrade approached John with a delicate expression on his face.

“So,” Lestrade said. “The wedding’s still on?”

“Of course the wedding’s still on,” John said, brows furrowed. “Why wouldn’t the wedding still be on?”

“Um.” Lestrade studied John, as if trying to determine if he was serious. When he saw that he was, he did his best to affect a neutral facial expression. He did a rather poor job at it. “No reason,” he said. “So…” He gestured vaguely in the direction of wherever Sherlock was off to, causing chaos. “So you two…you aren’t…” He waved a palm in the air in a manner that he seemed to think communicated something.

For a moment, John felt as if he were interacting with Sherlock and his vague _we both know what’s going on here_ manner. John never cared for it when it came from Sherlock and he certainly didn’t care for it coming from Lestrade. He frowned. “We aren’t…what?”

Lestrade's face turned an unprecedented shade of red. He dropped his palm back to his side. “Nothing,” he said. “I was just…” he swallowed, “wondering.” Then he patted John on the back and pretended to take a phone call.

John watched Lestrade walk away on his fake phone call, brows still furrowed. That had been a bit odd, now hadn’t it?

Sherlock strode back over to him. Behind him, a forensic officer was crying into his hands.

“Sherlock,” John said, “do you have any idea why—“

“ _John_ ,” Sherlock said excitedly. “Come look at this. They’ve found _nail clippings_. Nail clippings that don’t belong to the victim.” With that, he darted away, pausing only to yell at the forensic officer again for blowing his nose in the middle of a crime scene.

John followed, his odd interaction with Lestrade all but forgotten.

* * *

The Watsons were married the next week. It was a lovely ceremony and about as calm of a reception as John could have anticipated with Sherlock around. Really, if there hadn’t been an attempted murder, the whole evening would have seemed odd. The day was a bit of a whirlwind, but not for the same reasons that everyone told John it would be. In truth, he was still trying to fit the whole of it into his head cleanly.

At the moment, John had his arms around Mary. The DJ was playing some up-tempo dance number that John didn’t recognize, and he was doing his best to move the both of their bodies in some semblance of rhythm while his brain froze and restarted in rapid cycles. Around them, a veritable sea of wedding guests bounced and laughed and shouted over the music. The room was red and green and flickering. It was a _lot_.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Mary asked. She had to shout a bit over the din.

“Fantastic,” John said, in a tone that did not quite match his choice of words.

John’s brain recovered from its most recent reboot and tried to have another go at understanding the events of the day. It stuttered, nearly freezing again, but managed to cling to proper functioning by its fingernails. It cycled through the past few hours and started spinning. In defense of John’s brain, there was a lot that warranted a fair bit of spinning.

Sherlock had given a tremendously kind and heartfelt speech, which sent John’s brain spinning.

John’s best mate from his military days had nearly been murdered in front of him by their wedding photographer, which sent John’s brain spinning.

Mary was pregnant, which sent John’s brain into a cyclone-like nosedive.

 _Pregnant,_ John thought, and his brain froze again. For a moment, there was only the loud red-and-green din of the room while his brain began the arduous process of restarting again. John wondered if he would ever be fully functional again.

“It’s just that the thing on your face doesn’t quite look like a smile anymore,” Mary said. “It’s getting a bit frightening.”

“Sure is loud in here,” John said.

John’s brain came partially back online and sent him a rapid-fire arrangement of memories from the day. Rushing to Sholto’s room, pleading with him not to let himself die ( _We would never do that to John Watson,_ Sherlock had said). Waltzing with Mary in the dim lights of the dance floor, half-seeing her, half-hearing the notes Sherlock played behind them ( _Did you know he was going to do that?_ John asked Mary later). Catching Sherlock’s gaze during his speech and seeing something that John didn’t fully understand, feeling something that he understood even less ( _You sit between the two people who love you the most in all this world,_ Sherlock had said). The look of panic in Mary’s eyes when Sherlock told her she ought to take a pregnancy test ( _There is absolutely no reason to panic,_ Sherlock had said). Sherlock’s smile, wide and genuine, just after. Sherlock’s smile, changing and fading, turning into something different, as if Sherlock had just realized something he would have preferred never to have known.

They danced away from Sherlock then, but John had the feeling that he shouldn’t have. He glanced back and Sherlock had vanished, his tall frame nowhere to be seen amongst the throng of people.

“Right,” Mary said. “So I’ll ask you again. Are you alright?”

“Yes. Wow,” John said, releasing her to adjust his tie. “It’s hot in here. And loud. Is it loud?” He pointed off to the side. “I’m just going to pop out—”

“Do you want me to come with you?” Mary asked. She seemed concerned.

“No,” John said, doing his best to look like there was absolutely no reason to panic, which of course there wasn’t. “Stay here. Have fun. I just need some air.” With that, he turned and shouldered his way through the bobbing sea of bodies. He glanced around the dance floor, looking for Sherlock. Nothing. He got to the front of the hall, by the stage, hoping that Sherlock might still be packing away his violin. However, Sherlock’s violin sat on its case, abandoned. Sherlock was nowhere to be found.

Odd, John thought. It wasn’t like Sherlock to leave his violin like that.

He scanned the hall again. In truth, he wasn’t certain specifically why he was looking for Sherlock. The logical course of action would be for John to stay out on the dance floor with Mary, his new wife. His pregnant wife. All he knew was that he could feel a proper panic starting to come on and he very much needed Sherlock to talk him through it.

He also very much needed silence. And air.

He burst through the front door of the hall and out into the blessed cool of the night. After the door shut behind him, the boom of the music was muffled and John could properly hear himself think for the first time that night. He sighed, leaning against the brick wall of the building, feeling his body start to still and unravel. Cool was good. Silence was good.

He got a flash—a snippet of a memory, a déjà vu that popped his eyes open. Something about a wall seemed familiar, the way the brick pressed against his back, scratched against his jacket. There was a feeling that went along with it, something akin to heat and need. He narrowed his eyes. He went after the memory, but it was gone just as quickly as it came.

John lifted himself off the wall and looked around. It was a long shot that he would find Sherlock out here anyway. However, someone _had_ been out here; the bushes just next to him were disturbed and there was a puddle of something—sick, John saw—just to the side. John wrinkled his nose, but figured this sort of thing was to be expected at a wedding with a free bar.

He scanned the area once more for Sherlock before forcing himself back inside. He had a wife to get back to now, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did it! I wrote more chapters!
> 
> New chapters, hot from the oven, will be released once a week!
> 
> As always, follow me on Tumblr for updates and general Johnlock Hell: https://arwamachine.tumblr.com/
> 
> Virtual hugs and love,
> 
> Arwa


	3. Black as a Raven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Do I remember?” the John from Sherlock's Mind Palace asked, jerking his head to the side, gesturing at someone absent. “The other me?”
> 
> Sherlock shook his head, wrapping his arms around himself. “Certainly not.”
> 
> John leaned forward, placing a palm on the mattress just next to Sherlock’s head. “Do you want me to?”

The world faded in and out of perception in broad strokes of browns and yellows. Consciousness drifted back gingerly and skittered away as soon as it was noticed, a frightened mouse. When light was so bold as to touch the walls, it did so without conviction and left little of an impact. As such, there was much of the room that was left to the imagination, which seemed to be a positive thing, as the reality of the room—with its graffiti and dubious stains and obvious signs of damp and decay—was not particularly pleasant to behold. Imagination could take over and produce something different. Not necessarily better, but different. A quality of optical illusion hung about, a skepticism regarding whether one’s perceptions were accurate, whether it was a rabbit or a duck sitting just in front of you. It was all a touch unreal. There was a haze to the lot of it, a vague sense that, although there was still a high probability that at least most of everything was real, there was also a smaller yet definite chance that nothing at all was real. Sherlock liked those odds.

_Oh what a night_

The smell was appalling, but Sherlock had gotten used to it fairly quickly. A perk of ordinary nervous system functioning—a brain that no longer needs to light up at previously-observed stimuli in preference for the novel. And Sherlock’s nervous system was moving a bit slowly at the moment, by design. It seemed as if he could feel each synapse attempting to fire, a lighter nearly out of fuel, messages sludging through his neurons as if through a bog. An extraordinary amount of effort was dedicated to the process of breathing—in and out, in and out. It was lovely. It was just what Sherlock wanted.

When Sherlock went to procure his usual solution from that Wiggins chap at a time that could either have been late last night or four weeks ago (time was tricky, another possible illusion), Wiggins had given him a baggie of a different substance instead. _It’s mine,_ he had said with all the pride of a child who recently learned to count to ten. _My concoction. High just as good, if not better. Lasts twice as long_. Sherlock shrugged and accepted it, because the _how_ wasn’t particularly important regarding this altered state he was chasing.

In retrospect, it was apparent that Wiggins had mixed something different into his concoction, something that took all the bones out of Sherlock’s limbs and replaced them with water. Not that it mattered. He wasn’t going anywhere and he couldn’t even smell the piss on his mattress anymore. Everything was fine. There was absolutely no reason to panic.

_Late December back in sixty-three_

_what a very special time for me_

Reds and blues danced across the wall as a police car sped by, completely ignoring the dilapidated building and its questionable inhabitants. The police were aware of this particular drug den, Sherlock knew (Sherlock knew the police). However, the business of bursting in and attempting to wrangle an assortment of mostly-homeless smackheads was associated with a mountain of paperwork, and some things are best left alone. Some things are too far gone. Too far past saving. Too late, too late. It was all too late now.

Reds and blues and reds and blues. Reds and greens and lilacs and canary yellows.

It was John’s smile that had done it, there at the end. Brought it all screaming back.

_I remember, what a night_

Sounds were unreal, coming and going seemingly at random. It took Sherlock’s brain ages to process the actual existence of noise, and even then he couldn’t be sure if he heard any of it or if it was just in his head. There were coughs and moans and sirens and occasionally someone vomiting—meaningless, all of it. Whether these noises existed or not was inconsequential. Once he thought he heard Molly explaining to him the potential chemical properties in the concoction Wiggins sold him. He waved her away. She was in his head, and he didn’t much care what she had to say. Mycroft’s image popped by to say something condescending and unhelpful. Sherlock sent him off with a string of profanity that in retrospect he might have said out loud. Earlier in the night (or later in the morning), two of the tenants of this particular room got into a slow, slurring version of an altercation that consisted largely of them coughing out various insults and empty promises for violence at each other from their respective mattresses. It had taken Sherlock quite a while to realize that the sounds were happening in reality and not in some flickering corner of his own mind and even longer to realize that the sounds were irritating.

“If you go home right now,” Sherlock had said, “you’ll find your daughter on your doorstep, ready to make amends.” He didn’t have a particular person in mind for the deduction. However, given the history of decision-making of the occupants in this room, estranged children seemed a high-probability occurrence. Indeed, one of the shouting junkies left. The room lapsed back into a relative silence, leaving Sherlock alone with the sounds in his own mind, which—as it turned out—was a bit of a lateral move.

_Oh what a night_

That bloody song. Sherlock wasn’t certain he’d heard it before John and Mary’s wedding. If he had, he certainly deleted it. It had no business taking up space in his brain. However, it had right well moved in now, established permanent residence square in the center of Sherlock’s hippocampus. There were times during the past month when it had gone blissfully silent, but it always cropped back up, the obnoxious synthesizer moving from C to F on repeat in Sherlock’s brain. Times like that, the song was a fussing toddler; the more one tried to ignore it, the louder it screamed. Sherlock was fairly certain that this song, this song over everything else, would be responsible for driving him insane in the end.

_I was never gonna be the same_

The song was the backdrop to John’s smile. The song (four-four time, C major key, synthesizers bopping, disco-era, dull dull dull) ripped through the air as John smiled. The lights—blues and greens and dull reds—shone on as John smiled. Sherlock smiled as John smiled; the two laughed together. Then Sherlock remembered. Then he stopped smiling. His nuisance of a giant genius brain decided to capture the moment as such, with all of the unnecessary sensory details. The lights. The chatter of the crowd. The floral notes of Mary’s perfume ( _Claire de la Lune_ ). That bloody _song_.

John’s smile.

Somewhere in the room, somebody rolled to the side and vomited. This might have happened just now or twenty minutes ago and Sherlock’s brain only recently registered the noise. The dull splatter of fairly-empty stomach contents against bare floor. The choked cough of an esophagus too tired to put up much of a fight. A groan. The sick smell of bile floating back towards him. The first night Sherlock came to this particular establishment—the night of John and Mary’s wedding—he had been sick too. He hadn’t used in ages, not since before he met John, and he miscalculated the depreciation of his tolerance. No matter. He gained it all back in no time, and then some. He was a quick study.

“What are you doing here, Sherlock?”

Sherlock lifted his head. He opened his eyes. He looked in the direction of the noise. There was, of course, a chance that he actually did none of those things and merely continued lying along his side on the piss-stained mattress, existing in varying states of unconsciousness, but for the sake of argument Sherlock was willing to say that he looked up.

There was John, sitting cross-legged on the floor next to the mattress where Sherlock lay, looking disappointed. Right. This just sort of happened sometimes, when Sherlock was here. John wasn’t really there, of course, but he certainly would be disappointed if he knew Sherlock was. John reached forward and placed a palm on Sherlock’s forehead. He brushed back the matting of sweaty curls from his face. It wasn’t real, Sherlock knew, but it still felt like pain.

_You’re a right mess,_ John had said to him, that night. With that smile on his face.

“It’s for a case, John,” Sherlock said. His voice came back to him funny, a prerecording. Sherlock is not available at the moment. Please leave a message.

“No it’s not,” John said. His hand was still in Sherlock’s hair. Sherlock hated his own brain.

“Magnussen,” Sherlock said. The word tripped over his tongue. He was fairly certain he got it right, as much as he was certain of anything at the moment.

“What I mean is,” John said, “you don’t have to actually _use_ drugs if you want people to think you’re _on_ drugs.” He removed his hand from Sherlock’s hair and it felt rather like a knife being pulled from a stab-wound. “And you know that.”

_Oh I, I got a funny feeling when she walked in the room_

“That song is abhorrent,” Sherlock said.

“I know,” John said, his lips twitching into a smile. “The DJ picked it. Don’t look at me.”

Red and blue lights dancing on the walls again, but fainter this time. It must be approaching daylight. Sherlock wasn’t certain if his eyes were open or not. He had been here for the entirety of the night. At some point, he would have to figure out how to use his limbs again and stand. Walk. Leave. Find a cab. Janine was likely to be back at the flat, touching things, getting her smell everywhere. Not that it mattered.

“What’s this all about, Sherlock?” John asked.

_Oh my, as I recall it ended much too soon_

“You,” Sherlock said, too tired to lie.

The red-and-green lights of the dance floor flashed around them and that bloody song played and Sherlock stumbled over his words telling Mary about her own pregnancy and John smiled up at Sherlock with that beaming smile and if Sherlock had known it would have made him remember, that _that_ moment specifically would have uncovered the bones of the memory from the dredges of Sherlock’s mind, he would have run from the building in the middle of the first dance, leaving his violin clattering to the floor behind him. He would have given anything not to remember. It was the first instance in Sherlock’s life in which more knowledge was a detriment. As it was, however, he did remember. And, despite his best efforts, he seemed unlikely to forget.

“We shagged,” Sherlock said.

The John in his head—the one who wasn’t really sitting cross-legged on the floor beside him—already knew this. He nodded. “We did,” he said.

At the wedding, John grasped his neck and beamed up at him and suddenly Sherlock was back in an alley in which he never remembered being except he _did_ remember and John was in front of him, smiling at him with eyes hung heavy with alcohol and then their mouths were on each other’s and their bodies were pressed together and Sherlock could feel John’s erection against his own and he was lifting John up and tugging down his trousers and—

_Oh what a night_

_hypnotizing, mesmerizing me_

“It was good,” John said.

If Sherlock had his eyes open, he would have pressed them closed. “No it wasn’t,” he said.

“Yes,” John said, “it was. It was good. It was very good.”

It _was_ good. Sherlock stood there in the center of the dance floor at John’s wedding, remembering precisely how John’s body felt as it wrapped around his fingers, his cock. He remembered how John gasped and cursed and moaned and cried out for him, how John bucked and writhed against him, how John’s body clenched and spasmed as he came, one hand bracing against the wall, the other pumping furiously over his cock. He remembered John still smiling up at him after, that bloody smile. He remembered melting into John’s mouth, his spent body. He remembered wanting to stay as such forever—a foolhardy notion, spurred on by alcohol, no doubt.

_She was everything I dreamed she’d be_

John noticed the change in his face, of course, and fumbled with what to do with the moment. Sherlock was not particularly certain what to do with the moment either, or what to do with anything anymore for that matter. John and Mary danced away and Sherlock watched them leave, feeling as if his skin was on fire. It seemed as if all of London were on the dance floor, crowding in around him, and the room was hotter than any room had a right to be. The lights were pulsing and that song—that bloody _song_ —was _blaring_ , the loudest music Sherlock ever heard.

_Oh what a night oh what a night oh what a night oh—_

Sherlock could not have left the wedding fast enough. He nearly sprinted out of the hall, bumping into a few disgruntled guests as he went and possibly knocking over a small child. It was still difficult to breathe once he was outside, despite the cool air and the blessed lack of _people_. He could still hear the faint C to F synthesizer transition of that song, fainter now that he was outside but seemingly chasing him, and his lungs were certainly not taking in enough oxygen. He pressed himself against a wall and bent in half and tried to get his head between his legs but when he closed his eyes he saw John again—face contorted, mouth open, hands pressed against the brick of the alleyway, pushing himself back against Sherlock’s cock as he made noises Sherlock never could have imagined—and the song screamed through his brain ( _oh what a night oh what a night oh what a night_ ) and he was sick all over the ground just outside the hall. Then he left straight for this place, bought some substance or another off of that Wiggins chap, and was sick again all over one of the mattresses. He had been here fairly regularly after that, regularly enough that people were learning his name—or rather, the fake name he gave. He still popped back by the flat, still worked on the Magnussen case, still did his best to court Janine, but it was all a bit halfhearted, distracted. It was difficult to focus over the song.

“Do I remember?” John asked, jerking his head to the side, gesturing at someone absent. “The other me?”

Sherlock shook his head, wrapping his arms around himself. “Certainly not.” If John remembered, it would have been obvious. It would have been an explosion. John would have been angry and upset and raging in a fairly incoherent manner. He might not have had anything productive to say to Sherlock on the matter, but he would certainly have wanted to confess to Mary. John was like that—honest. Forthright. There would have been a row, and might not have been a wedding. It was also unlikely that there would be a _child_ on the way. No, John didn’t remember.

John leaned forward, placing a palm on the mattress just next to Sherlock’s head. “Do you want me to?”

“ _No_ ,” Sherlock said. Sherlock didn’t even want to remember himself. He couldn’t imagine bringing another party into this nightmare.

John licked his lips. “You’re lying,” he said.

"You’re married,” Sherlock said.

“I’m married,” John leaned closer. He planted his hand on the other side of Sherlock’s head, uncrossing his legs and shifting into kneeling.

“With a child on the way,” Sherlock said. He found himself rather fixated on John’s mouth. Somewhere, the song was still playing, but the volume was lowering. Somewhere else, likely in reality, there was a bit of a commotion. Distant yelling.

“With a child on the way,” John repeated. He lifted a leg over Sherlock’s midsection, straddling him at the thighs.

“You’re happy,” Sherlock said.

John’s face was close to his. His clear eyes bore into Sherlock’s, which may or may not have been open. “Am I?” he asked.

“You have what you want,” Sherlock said. “The life you want. The person you want.”

John’s hand slipped into Sherlock’s hair. Sherlock could nearly feel the weight of John’s legs pressing down against his thighs. He tried not to sigh. “What if I want something different?” John asked.

“You don’t,” Sherlock said. “The other you doesn’t, anyway. This line of inquiry is irrelevant.”

Sherlock could swear he felt John’s breath against his lips. “And what do _you_ want, Sherlock?” John whispered.

Sherlock’s heavy arms drifted to John’s legs. He rubbed his hands up John’s thighs, practically feeling the warm, course material of John’s trousers underneath his fingers. John was stronger than he looked. The muscles underneath those trousers were noteworthy. “That line of inquiry is also irrelevant,” Sherlock said. Finding his voice took effort. John’s eyes were the only thing of beauty in the room.

Somewhere in the building, the commotion continued. Yelling. A cry of pain. In the room, someone moaned, rolled over on their mattress. The springs creaked, complaining. A rat scuttled by Sherlock’s head but he didn’t notice.

John’s fingers wound their way through Sherlock’s hair. His nose brushed against Sherlock’s. “You didn’t answer the question,” he said. “What do you want?”

Sherlock shook his head. His hands drifted up John’s sides. He felt John’s ribs expand and contract through his shirt. John wasn’t here. John was all in his head. He didn’t have to answer any of these questions.

“Yes you do,” John said. “You have to answer, because you know the answer. So I’ll ask again, genius.” John’s lips brushed against Sherlock’s. “What do you want?”

Sherlock's hands were on John’s back, digging into his shoulder blades. “Not this,” he said. “I don’t want this.”

“Are you sure?” John asked, sinking his mouth onto Sherlock’s.

Sherlock broke.

It was all terrible and he didn’t want any of it, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that John wasn’t real, wasn’t really there on top of him in this god-forsaken wasteland of a building, because Sherlock remembered now. He remembered what John’s mouth felt like against his, the way his tongue moved past his lips and tangled with his own, the way he tasted, that taste that was just _John_ , that Sherlock couldn’t have imagined but now would never forget. Sherlock made a noise that was just beyond him and wrapped his arms around John’s back, tugging him closer. John shifted his weight and slid down on top of Sherlock, slotting their legs together. Sherlock felt the press of John’s erection on his hip and ground upwards against him. He needed to hear John moan again. He needed to have John make those sounds, those sounds that were rattling through his brain, drowning out that damned song. It was all terrible and he didn’t want any of it, but Sherlock couldn’t stop.

“See?” John whispered. His eyes were closed. He was grinning.

Sherlock hated himself, but he was gone now—beyond even his own control. He grasped John’s arse with both hands and pulled him down against his pelvis, grinding against John’s cock with as much strength as his heavy limbs could muster. John moaned, the sound vibrating against Sherlock’s lips, and Sherlock felt the whole of his body shake from it. He rocked his hips up against John, feeling his cock stiffen further inside his trousers. John moved with him, rutting against Sherlock’s hip. Sherlock could feel John’s breathing quicken, panting against his mouth, turning his kisses sloppy.

“Sit up for me,” John said. His voice sounded far too calm.

“No,” Sherlock growled, grasping harder at John’s arse. He wasn’t sure if he could orgasm—an unfortunate side effect of the drugs that tended not to be particularly relevant to Sherlock’s life—but he needed John to come, needed to _make_ John come. He no longer cared that John was married, that John had a child on the way, that John wasn’t even _real_ , wasn’t here with him; he needed to feel John shudder and thrash against him, needed to hear him cry out, needed to watch his face fall apart, wrecked. The lines between illusion and reality had blurred a bit and it was starting to feel real. Sherlock could feel the weight of John on top of him, the heat of his body, the lovely friction as John ground against him faster, harder.

“Sit up,” John said again. It was his doctor voice, his kind-but-stern voice.

“No,” Sherlock said, biting at John’s lip. “Come for me.”

“ _Sherlock._ ” John’s mouth was on his again. His body was tight, shaking. He was close. Sherlock moaned.

“Come for me,” he said into John’s mouth. “Come for me, John.”

“Look at me.” It was the doctor-voice again. Calm. Reassuring. Gently commanding. Sherlock wanted nothing to do with _gentle_ at the moment. He ground harder against John. The heat between them was billowing, burning. It was taking over. It was everything.

“No,” Sherlock said, because his eyes were closed and he could see John perfectly well like this. The song was gone and John was here and everything, for the moment, was wonderful and there was absolutely no reason to panic.

“Look at me.” John stilled. His doctor-voice intensified.

Sherlock opened his eyes.

John was gone, of course. Sherlock was laying on his side once more, staring at a wall filled with unmentionable stains, the worn fabric of the ratty mattress pressing against his cheek. He made a noise that sounded like a whimper. Sunlight peeked through the cracks in the boarded windows. It was properly morning now, which made this establishment properly depressing. Sherlock expected Magnussen at his flat in a few short hours but seriously considered not being present for that meeting in favor of crawling downstairs and begging Wiggins for more of whatever it was he took last night. Sherlock very much wanted both his brain and his body to leave him the hell alone.

“Do you think I know a lot of people here?”

Sherlock blinked.

That voice didn’t sound like it was just in his head. His ears detected the sound waves, vibrating through his eardrums and through his cochlear nerve and back into his auditory cortex, where his brain told him two distinct things: the voice he just heard was, in fact, in the room with him; the voice belonged to John Watson.

Sherlock squeezed his eyes closed. Ah.

John—the other John, the one who wasn’t in Sherlock’s head, the one who didn’t know they shagged and was happily married with a child on the way—was really here. Sherlock would have to suffer on with both a brain and a body for a bit longer, it would seem. His ears were telling him that John was fussing with another junkie in the establishment—poking and prodding at him, helping him sit upright. He seemed to know the fellow, had come to get him. John didn’t know Sherlock was here, then. Well. That was about to change.

Sherlock took a deep breath. He pushed the last few remaining bars of the bloody song into the back corners of his mind, along with the rest of his memories. They were useless to him in this version of reality. He sighed, lifted his dumbbell of a head, and rolled over. Time to be Sherlock Holmes.

“Oh hello John,” he said. “Come for me?”

* * *

“How is London’s most brilliant smackhead?” Mary asked as John burst into the kitchen in rather more of a huff than he’d like, throwing his keys on the table with a clatter. “Did you get him all sorted back at the flat?” She leaned against the counter, sipping at a cup of tea that was half-caffeinated because of the baby and, as such, she fully hated.

John stood, a jumble of disparate bodily sensations, staring at his keys on the table. One of them left a little scratch in the wood. He ground his teeth together. “Sherlock has a girlfriend,” John said. “Did you know that?” This came out rather more accusatory than he meant. Angry, almost. John wasn’t particularly sure what that was all about.

“Girlfriend?” Mary asked, choking on her laughter. “ _Sherlock_? I thought he was…” She paused, pressing her lips together. “I mean, I didn’t think he was interested in…”

“Relationships,” John finished, just as Mary said, “Women.”

“Oh,” Mary said.

“Right,” John said, scratching at his hair. “Women, I suppose.” He shook his head. “Anyway. You’ll never guess who.”

Mary looked delighted. She set her cup down on the counter, ready for the reveal. “Who?”

“Janine,” John said. This also came out rather more accusatory than intended. It nearly sounded as if John blamed Mary for the whole of it, for inadvertently masterminding the entirety of the situation just by virtue of knowing the both of them. Which, John knew, was entirely illogical.

“No!” Mary said. “Janine?” She laughed, clapping her hands together. “Well,” she said, thinking. “I suppose they got on rather well at the wedding, didn’t they?”

“Did they?” John asked. His tone was off again. He kept sounding angry. It must have something to do with the fact that it felt as if his stomach was a kettle boiling over, hissing and steaming.

“Well yes, of course,” Mary said. “I’m sure you noticed the two were chatting along quite nicely at the reception. You know. Before the,” she waved a hand, “murdery bits.”

John sniffed, made a little grumpy noise. He _hadn’t_ noticed. He would have remembered. “Well,” he said. “The two are certainly getting on rather well now. She’s practically moved into the flat, it seems. Moving the coffee around, calling him _Sherl_...”

“ _Sherl?_ ” Mary clapped her hands together. “Do you think I can start calling him that too? _Sherl_!”

“...and wearing his shirts,” John muttered, practically inaudible.

Mary heard nonetheless. “ _No,_ ” she gasped, her mouth falling open. “Do you… Do you think they’ve…” She tapped the tips of her index fingers together, eyebrows waggling. John felt as if he might be sick everywhere.

“I’d say so,” he said, focusing very intently on the way his keys were sprawled across the table. He found that he hated those keys, every single one of them.

“Oh my god,” Mary was laughing, practically doubled over. John felt as if his teeth might shatter from grinding them together.

“Says she’s the only one who really knows what he’s like,” John said, his voice so low Mary didn’t even hear him over her laughter.

“Well good,” she said, wiping a tear from her eye. “Good for them. I mean, I always thought he was…” she waved a hand, “you know. But good for him.”

“Yeah,” John said, grinding his knuckles into the wood of the table. “Good for him.”

Mary crossed behind him, bringing her barely-drunk half-caffeinated tea to the sink. “Sherlock in a relationship.” She shook her head. “With a woman.” She laughed again, and John wondered what it was about this situation that Mary seemed to find so bloody hilarious. “You _know,_ ” she squeezed at John’s shoulder. “When I first met him, I thought he had a thing for _you_.”

John’s insides managed to feel both hot and cold simultaneously. It was a very confusing set of sensations. “You did?”

“He was just so clearly happy to see you,” she said, wide smile planted across her face. “Really, John—he planned that whole scene at the restaurant, dressing up as that ridiculous waiter, just to tell you he was back in London.”

“That’s just Sherlock,” John said. “Being a dick.”

“Right,” Mary said. “So he dressed up as waiters for everyone else, then?”

John’s gaze dropped back down to the keys. The bloody keys.

Mary poured her tea into the sink, rinsing out the cup. “I wasn’t worried or anything,” she said. “I mean, it’s _you_. Just a feeling I got, is all.”

“Well. Regardless,” John said. “Sherlock doesn’t feel things like that.” The sentence was so practiced John barely heard himself say it.

Mary moved in close, squeezing his shoulder conspiratorially. “He does _now_.”

The sound John made couldn’t have been called a laugh even by the loosest of definitions.

When John was growing up, there was a stray cat in his neighborhood who used to hiss and spit at everyone who walked by, John included. It was a big, mangy thing and John figured it never had a home, never had any proper human interaction. John found himself oddly drawn to it; there was something lovely about it, even in all its standoffishness. John did his best to befriend it, even tried feeding it bits of food, but it never really took. After months of trying, the most progress he made was the cat no longer arching and hissing whenever he got near. It always skittered away when he got too close, and he was never once able to pet the thing. He figured it was the best he could get with the cat, and felt oddly proud that he’d managed to even get that far. He assumed the cat was just feral and unfriendly. It wouldn’t ever belong to anyone.

Anyway.

It might have all been much more manageable with Sherlock if it weren’t for the dreams, which were really starting to get out of hand as of late.

John wasn’t a stranger to the dreams. Before Sherlock’s fall, the dreams would crop up every now and then, rearranging the furniture in John’s mind and leaving him alone to sort himself out. _Those_ dreams, he would think of them as, and leave it at that. They got particularly bad around the time Irene Adler reared her ridiculously-coiffed head; for a while there, John dreaded going to sleep, knowing he was only to wake up an hour or so later with a confusing erection and a head full of profanity. They always waxed and waned, though. He could manage.

The dreams changed after Sherlock’s fall, and certainly not for the better. The dreams were predominantly about the fall itself, and soon John could practically predict them down to the moment. They would usually start with him standing in front of Barts, looking up at Sherlock perched atop the roof, moments away from attempting to fly. John would scream at him until it felt his lungs would give out, but he never made a sound. He would run to Sherlock, legs pumping with all his strength, but he never moved from his spot on the pavement. And Sherlock would fall, limbs flailing, coat flapping through the air behind him, landing on the pavement with a sound John could never fully erase from his mind. It was the sort of thing that could make him nostalgic for his nightmares about Afghanistan, all blood and firefight. He would have _paid_ for an explosion.

In the two years Sherlock was gone, he only ever had one of _those_ dreams, the ones he used to have before. In that dream, his screams were sound in his mouth and his legs were made of muscle and he somehow found his way onto that roof. He ran to Sherlock and grabbed his hand and pulled him away from the ledge. Sherlock looked at him with a mixture of irritation and surprise and interest, his lips parting in a question he never got to ask. John hadn’t let go of his hand, and if he could help it he never would. _Don’t you leave me,_ he had whispered. _Don’t you dare leave me._ Then he grabbed at the lapels of Sherlock’s coat and pulled him closer, pulled their mouths together in a kiss that was hungry and violent. Sherlock made a surprised noise but then his mouth was moving, opening, exploring. His arms wrapped around John and the two of them fell backwards onto the dirty tile of the roof and Sherlock’s legs were slotted between John’s and his hands were snaking down to grope at John’s arse and then John was awake, a cyclone of joy and confusion and arousal and sorrow and as soon as he realized it was a dream he began sobbing uncontrollably. This particular dream chose to come about shortly after he moved in with Mary, which was truly catastrophic timing.

Mary had rubbed at his chest, doing her best to comfort him while being half-asleep herself. _Afghanistan?_ she asked, her eyes barely open.

John nodded, finding that the lie was more helpful to his relationship than the truth ever would be and doing his best to cover up the flagging remains of what had been a stunning erection. He tripped into the bathroom and choke-cried into the sink and his subconscious must have gotten the hint because that was the only one of _those_ dreams he had while Sherlock was dead. John didn’t know how one of _those_ dreams could be so decidedly worse than the dreams where he watched Sherlock die over and over, but it was.

After Sherlock came back, the dreams started trickling in slowly, like a leaky faucet John could never quite fix, no matter how many tools he tried. On their face, the dreams were harmless—he and Sherlock out at a crime scene together, sharing a cab back to Baker Street, sitting in the flat—but there would be a charge to it, a hint of static before the lightning strike. It would be Sherlock staring into his eyes two moments too long, their hands brushing together in the center of the cab, sitting just a little too close on the sofa in the flat, neither one of them moving as their thighs rubbed together. John would wake with a vague sense of hunger. Wanting more. Claiming that the dreams were innocent was a lie, but it was a reasonable lie. John could even believe it himself if needed, and it was needed. John was with Mary, after all, and Sherlock was...Sherlock.

Before Sherlock fell, John was only bothered by the dreams in a vague sort of way. It wasn’t so much the content of the dreams—John had erotic dreams since he was a teenager, after all—it was that it was _Sherlock_ , the man who believed that sentiment was a weakness and love was a chemical defect and relationships were meaningless, the man who set John straight about his desire to engage in any sort of romantic relationship mere hours after meeting him. John recognized a hopeless situation when he saw one, and he was never one to waste his time on futility. Best to realize when something is impossible and move the hell on. Besides, John enjoyed the odd little friendship he had managed to cobble together with Sherlock and didn’t want to do anything to cock it up, especially now that he had Sherlock back from the dead. His subconscious, it would seem, wasn’t so easily dissuaded.

This past month, the exact amount of time it had been since John last saw Sherlock, the dreams returned with a vengeance. They began shortly before the wedding, because catastrophic timing was sort of John’s thing, it would seem. It started out faceless, the goings-on in the dreams—John’s cheek pressed against a wall as he was taken from behind by someone unseen, rough and wonderful just like it was in the army—but John always knew it was Sherlock. It was something about the hands, the fingers that clutched at his hips, dug into his chest, wrapped around his cock and pulled mercilessly. Those were Sherlock’s hands, skilled and precise and deadly. Then, just a couple weeks ago, a voice in his ear ( _John_ ), low and devastating, and it was unquestionably Sherlock’s. The first time he heard it, John jolted awake mere seconds away from coming into his pyjamas, the first wet dream he would have had since he was fourteen. He clutched at his throbbing cock, panting and trying to think of _anything_ that might stave off his oncoming orgasm, thanking all that was holy that the pregnancy made Mary sleep like the dead because it would be much harder to convince her that _this_ had anything to do with Afghanistan. He resisted as long as he possibly could (which, truth be told, was not particularly long) before he slipped out of bed and into the bathroom. It only took three rough strokes before he came all over his hand and stomach and a bit on the floor of the loo.

_This,_ John thought as he scrubbed the floor within an inch of its life, _is more than a bit not good._

It only got worse from there. All plausible deniability that it was Sherlock in his dreams had vanished, as it was now Sherlock on top of him with John's legs flung over his shoulders, gasping down at him with a pained expression as John moaned beneath him. It was Sherlock on his knees in front of John, looking up at him through his eyelashes as John’s cock was buried deep in his throat. It was Sherlock’s mouth on his, shoving John against a wall and grinding a thigh between his legs until John was a shuddering wreck, nearly coming in his pyjamas once again. He didn’t wank—he _refused_ to wank—but it took nearly all the self-control he had.

That is all to say, this month that John spent away from Sherlock had been difficult in more ways than one.

Right, so the problem with the cat came about when John was walking home from school and saw a classmate approaching the thing. He thought about calling out, warning the boy that the cat wasn’t friendly and was likely to bite. However, before he got the words out the boy crouched down and held a hand out to the cat. The cat walked right up to him—no hissing or anything—and grazed the top of its furry head against the boy’s outstretched palm. The boy scratched behind his ears and the cat’s little eyes closed, pressing into his fingers. The cat moved around the boy’s squatted legs, rubbing against him. John swore he actually heard _purring_ , even from across the way. John walked closer, dumbfounded. As soon as the cat saw him, it sprinted away, a cloud of fur in its wake. _He’s real friendly with me_ , the boy explained. Right then, John realized. It wasn’t that the cat didn’t like people. It was that the cat didn’t like _him._

The next day, a group of them were playing tag outside of school. The boy—the one the cat apparently liked more than John—was with them and John ran full-force into him, shoving him to the ground with a two-handed push that surprised even him. The boy hit the ground with a thud and skidded across the pavement, scraping his elbow.

“Sorry,” John said as he stood over him. But he wasn’t.

It wasn’t an acceptable solution then and it certainly wasn’t now.

Mary was talking to him. “Are you listening?” she said.

“Yes,” John said. He hadn’t been.

Mary sighed. “I was saying,” she said, “that I’m going out with the girls tonight. I might not get back until late. Are you okay to do dinner on your own?”

John nodded. “That’s fine,” he said. “Sherlock wanted me to help out with a case tonight anyway.” In his distraction about Janine, he had actually forgotten to mention to his wife that he planned to be away for the evening. Bit not good indeed.

“Oh really?” Mary asked. “Anything interesting?”

John remembered how Mycroft responded when he heard Sherlock speak Charles Augustus Magnussen’s name, that threatening way in which he urged Anderson out of the flat. He remembered Sherlock’s warnings about Magnussen, his assertions that this man above all others truly turned his stomach. He remembered Magnussen himself, a disgusting sliver of a man, all the slippery confidence of a person who knew how to be dangerous. _Best keep the details of the case to a minimum_ , John thought.

He shrugged. “Some creep causing problems,” he said. “Should be fun.”

“Well,” Mary smiled. “Give Sherlock my love.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More chapters to come! I'll be posting once a week!
> 
> As always, you can find me living that Johnlock life on Tumblr: https://arwamachine.tumblr.com/
> 
> Thank you for reading and I love you.
> 
> Hearts,
> 
> Arwa


	4. Strong and Thin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They had turned wound-cleaning and dressing changes into a science at this point, but John still felt the need to ask for permission each time he undid Sherlock's shirt, as if undressing him was an intimacy that might cause Sherlock harm, which in a way it sort of was.
> 
> Plan: tell him the answer is yes. Always yes, to all of it, whatever it is. Yes, John. Yes.

_Plan 17: morphine. Doesn’t matter how. Doesn’t matter how much. Just needs to be immediate._

Sherlock shook his head. Plan 17 was not a viable plan, no matter how much his brain argued otherwise. The pain was making him restless, but each time he shifted in his chair it felt as if a knife sunk into his chest. Or, more precisely, a bullet. Sherlock uncrossed and recrossed his legs, trying to find a position that ached less. However, all positions ached an equal amount. He winced, trying to exhale quietly enough for John not to notice, not that John was noticing much of anything at the moment. His brain reminded him about Plan 17.

Sherlock wondered if insisting on leaving hospital so soon wasn’t a poor decision. He hated hospitals and assumed that he would be much more comfortable back at Baker Street. John would be there, he reminded his medical team. John was a doctor. He would be sure that Sherlock cared for his wounds as instructed. As it turned out, very little at Baker Street was comfortable at the moment. Sitting at his chair hurt, but so did sitting at the table. So did walking around. So did laying on the sofa—and, besides, John insisted that Sherlock only lay with several pillows propped under him, which hurt. Everything, at the moment, hurt. Hence, Plan 17.

_Plan 21: find a way into Appledore and destroy the entirety of Magnussen’s files. If possible, destroy Magnussen along with them._

Sherlock didn’t particularly care for Plan 21 and would gladly have forgone the whole of it. Magnussen had dropped in his priorities as of late—having a bullet tear through your chest will do that, apparently. Still, on the off-chance that Plan 21 was to be enacted, it was best to keep his dependence on painkillers to a minimum. Sherlock needed to have his wits about him, and opioid withdrawal was notoriously distracting.

Not that Sherlock wasn’t distracted in other ways as of late.

Across the room, John cursed quietly. Sherlock glanced in his direction.

_Plan 2: tell him._

No.

John was currently hunched over the table in the sitting room, tapping a pen against the side of his head as if he were trying to knock information from his brain. He had been like that for the past hour and was starting to wear a divot in his hair. He lowered his pen to the notepad in front of him, hovering the tip of the pen over the paper for a moment. He wrote a single word then growled and scratched the word out with a force that likely tore the paper.

Since John found out about Mary and her questionable past, his frustration tolerance was at an all-time low, and it was never particularly high to begin with. The majority of his vocalizations were tinged with directionless venom, his quiet footsteps were replaced with stomps down the hallway, and he had already broken three teacups just by slamming them down too hard. Mrs. Hudson kept a wide berth. Sherlock’s own frustration tolerance was a bit low as of late, due mainly to high levels of pain and low levels of morphine. It was an ill-advised combination. Fortunately, John stoked his anger by lapsing into a stony silence, and talking was on the long list of activities that caused Sherlock pain ( _Plan 17_ ) and subsequent frustration, so the two of them tended to pass the time in a quiet, albeit agitated, companionship. In the very loosest definition of _working_ , it worked.

_Plan 38: somehow convince Mycroft that Magnussen has some type of scandalous information about him and let the bloody government handle it._

Plan 38 seemed a touch far-fetched.

John snatched up the piece of paper on which he had previously not been writing, crumbling it into a ball and hurling it across the room. It bounced against a wall, landing roughly where a half-dozen or so other crumbled-up pieces of paper sat. Mrs. Hudson wouldn’t be so daft as to _say_ something about the mess, but she would certainly give a look.

John was trying to figure out what to say to Mary. He hadn’t told Sherlock as much, but even in his compromised state Sherlock was able to deduce his actions fairly easily. As far as Sherlock knew, the two hadn’t spoken since the night at Leinster Gardens. Sherlock wasn’t particularly sure what John was intending to say to Mary when the two finally did speak, and from the looks of it neither did John.

_Plan 2: tell him._

Sherlock waved away Plan 2. Plan 2 was a fat, black fly whining insistently around his head that he would love to see splattered in the palm of his hand. Unfortunately, he was never quite fast enough to strike it. It droned on, undeterred. It made Plan 17 seem even more appealing.

John hadn’t been back to the flat he shared with Mary, aside from packing a small suitcase. He split his time between hospital and Baker Street (mostly hospital, if Sherlock was being honest) until Sherlock was discharged, at which point he switched to a full-time shift at 221b. He must have either taken time off at the surgery or severely scaled back his hours, because he seemed perpetually present—alternating between overseeing Sherlock’s aftercare like an overly-fastidious gran and generally being in a foul mood. Both behaviors had their clear downsides.

John lowered the pen to the paper again and started writing. The first few pen-strokes were always the same—his tight doctor’s cursive scrawling out the word _Mary._ After that, there was a long pause. He made a few more scratches—he must have worked out at least half a sentence—then another pause. Then the pen went back to his head, tap-tap-tapping away at the divot in his hair. John exhaled with force, rustling the paper in front of him.

_Plan 14: go to him. Stand up and walk over to him. Ignore the pain, it doesn’t matter. Wrap your arms around him. Tell him it’s alright, you have a plan. Rub the divot out of his hair with your fingers._

_Then enact Plan 2, followed swiftly by Plan 1._

If Plan 2 was a fly, then Plan 1 was a swarm, an infestation of stinging pests whizzing around Sherlock’s head with the intent of driving him mad. If there was a way to kill the swarm—to douse them in poison gas and watch them all fall to the floor in a twitching, dying mass—Sherlock would have done so instantly.

John scratched out a few more words before taking the notepad in both hands and slamming it against the table. Sherlock once saw John do the same to a criminal trying to attack the two of them—he grabbed the man by the sides of his face and slammed his head into a wall. It gave Sherlock the sense that John rather wished that his notepad was someone’s head at the moment. John ripped the paper from the pad, not stopping at just the sheet on which he had been writing, and threw the crumpled lot of it in the direction of the other wads. Bits of paper scattered across the floor, followed shortly by John’s pen. John exhaled in a long moan, digging his fingers through his hair and squeezing his eyes closed.

It had been this way for the past couple of weeks.

_Plan 11: ask him if he’s going back to her. Ask him if he still chooses her, even after. It might rip another hole through you, but you have to know. You hate not knowing._

Plan 11 was hideously ill-advised, even more so than Plan 39, which involved somehow procuring the resources of MI6 and the bulk of the fire brigade to stage some sort of a coup on Appledore or any other spot of unofficial power that could use a little overthrowing. Plan 39 had been dismissed shortly after its formation, although Sherlock liked to return to it when he was feeling a bit sour. Plan 11 only made Sherlock feel more sour.

Sherlock shifted again in his seat. Everything hurt. The movement, predictably, sent another stab of pain through his chest and he winced again, this time sucking in air and grabbing at the spot of bandage covering the bullet-sized wound in his chest.

John glanced over at him, hands still in his hair. “Shit,” he said. “Sorry.” He glanced at his watch. “Time for meds. And a dressing change.”

Sherlock nodded. The part of his brain that was insistent about Plan 17 cheered.

John stood, walking softly to where Sherlock sat. His angry stomps, for the moment, faded as he slipped back into Doctor Watson. He held out a hand and Sherlock took it, gripping at John firmly as he eased himself out of the chair. He saw John’s face contort slightly with each of his winces, each sharp intake of air as his chest screamed in protest. He saw John want to say several things but decide against saying any of them.

He nodded at John once he was standing, indicating that he was okay and could take it from here, but John’s firm grip remained wrapped around his fingers. He pressed a palm against Sherlock’s shoulder as the two walked slowly out of the room.

“Kitchen or bathroom?” John asked.

“Kitchen,” Sherlock said. The bathroom, he knew, was a more appropriate spot for wound-cleaning and dressing changes, but the kitchen was closer.

Sometimes John liked to remind him that he ought to be taking a few short walks every day to promote healing, but he skipped that portion of his lecture at the moment. Instead, he guided Sherlock into the kitchen and sat him down at the table, brushing aside remnants of chemistry equipment that had grown abysmally dusty in their neglect over the past few months.

_Plan 47: poison Magnussen. Slip something into his tea or whatever black sludge he drinks for sustenance. Don’t stop at Magnussen—poison everyone. Everyone but John._

John disappeared into the loo and returned with his medical bag tucked under his arm and a bottle of painkillers that Sherlock knew he meticulously counted every day, despite Sherlock’s assertions that he had no intentions of becoming addicted to the things anytime soon. John set his bag on the kitchen table and shook the pills out into his hand.

“Half-dose, please,” Sherlock said.

John raised an eyebrow. “You sure?”

The entirety of Sherlock’s brain was revolting. _Plan 17. Plan 17. Plan 17._ He nodded. “I’m sure.”

“Okay.” John wasn’t about to argue against Sherlock requesting fewer drugs. He handed Sherlock his half-dose and fetched him a glass of water. Sherlock crunched the pills between his teeth and swallowed the pieces eagerly, hoping for speedy effects. John pulled a chair in front of Sherlock and sat down, pulling gauze, bandages, and a bottle of saline out of his medical bag. He gestured at Sherlock’s chest. “Shirt?”

Sherlock nodded, and John’s fingers moved to the buttons on Sherlock’s shirt, undoing each with care. As the act of raising his arms over his head to change in and out of vests for dressing changes was a bit too painful, Sherlock had taken to wearing oversized button-ups. Sherlock could manage the buttons on his own, but his movements were slow and uncoordinated at times; as such, John helped. They had turned wound-cleaning and dressing changes into a science at this point, but John still felt the need to ask for permission each time, as if undressing him was an intimacy that might cause Sherlock harm, which in a way it sort of was.

_Plan 9: tell him the answer is yes. Always yes, to all of it, whatever it is. Yes, John. Yes._

The thought alone was nearly enough to make Sherlock flinch.

John unbuttoned enough of Sherlock’s shirt to uncover the majority of his torso and pushed the material off his shoulders, down his forearms. John’s palms followed the soft fabric as he slid it off Sherlock’s body, the warmth of his hands moving down Sherlock’s arms. Sherlock nearly reached out to him, placed his hands on John’s thighs, enacted Plan 1. He figured it was the painkillers, slowly starting to take hold, dulling his senses and turning bad ideas on their head. John’s eyes were on the bandage in the center of Sherlock’s chest. His mouth was a tight line. He seemed more affected by the sight of the wound today than he had been for the past few days; he must be feeling particularly guilty today.

“John,” Sherlock said. His hands were moving towards John’s thighs.

“Right,” John said, snapping back to attention. He tugged a set of gloves onto his hands and gingerly started pulling at the surgical tape that bound the large bandage to Sherlock’s chest. “Let me know if any of this hurts too much,” he said.

Sherlock nodded. It all hurt.

John peeled the bandages off and Sherlock stifled a wince as the material slid over his skin. John inspected the bandages carefully, ever the doctor. There was still drainage, but less so. Sherlock reminded himself that he was healing, although it certainly did not feel like it at the moment.

“Still no signs of infection,” John said. “That’s good.” He tossed the bandages into the trash and moved closer to Sherlock, placing both hands on his sides as he examined the wound. Sherlock kept his hands planted firmly in his lap. John had seen his fair share of injuries and was certainly not squeamish; he treated each dressing change with a calm and professionalism Sherlock was sure his patients saw regularly. However, there was a tightness to his lips and his jaw was clenched, teeth grinding together. John remained looking at the wound long after he finished inspecting it for infection, blinking rather a lot, his hands still on Sherlock’s sides. A warm buzzing started at the edges of Sherlock’s ears.

_Plan 12: tilt your head forward. Rest your forehead against his. Feel his breath against your lips and don’t move until it slows. Then rapidly enact Plan 1._

That would be the painkillers, then.

Sherlock felt John’s hands quickly tighten and release against his ribs. John cleared his throat, dropping his gaze as he changed his gloves. “How’s the pain today?” he asked. His voice was tight.

“It’s fine,” Sherlock said.

John paused in the middle of pouring saline onto a strip of gauze. _Really?_ his expression asked.

“About the same,” Sherlock said.

“Any worse?” John asked.

Sherlock shook his head and John lowered the damp gauze to his chest. John was gentle with wound cleaning, taking care not to press too hard or too fast, but Sherlock flinched all the same, sucking in air through his teeth as the cold material pressed against his wound. The painkillers must not be at full effect yet after all.

John’s face contorted. “I’m sorry,” he said. He seemed incapable of meeting Sherlock’s gaze.

Sherlock nodded rapidly as John tossed the gauze into the trash and began wetting a second with saline. Apologies were a regular part of dressing changes, and Sherlock never seemed to have a good enough grasp over the English language in the moment to explain to John that he had nothing to apologize for. The second piece of gauze swiped over his skin and Sherlock cursed quietly, his eyes squeezing closed.

“I’m sorry,” John said again, his voice pained. He gripped at Sherlock’s side with his free hand. “I’m so sorry, Sherlock.”

Sherlock opened his eyes and John was looking at him, his face cracking apart. “It’s alright, John,” Sherlock said, his breath still a bit ragged. He could feel his head starting to grow light, a blurriness to his thoughts. He was losing the strength to wave away his own ideas and they swarmed closer, an insistent drone in his ears.

John shook his head, his eyes dropping back down to Sherlock’s chest as he finished cleaning the wound. “It’s not,” he said. “It’s really not.”

_Plan 2: tell him._

_Plan 2: tell him._

_Plan 2: tell him._

John began drying the skin around the gunshot wound, dabbing at the area with dry gauze, which hurt in a different way. Sherlock dug his fingernails into his thighs and dropped his head, pressing his eyes closed once more. The painkillers were working their way through his system, but it still hurt. A half-dose can only do so much, after all. Sherlock did his best to keep his pain noises to a minimum—they only seemed to make John feel worse—but there wasn’t much he could do to control his breath at the moment. John muttered more apologies, dabbing at the damp skin with a bit more haste than usual.

“Almost done,” he whispered.

“It’s alright,” Sherlock said again, his words immediately undermined by a wince as John pressed a clean bandage to the wound, patting it flush against his skin and securing the sides with tape.

“There,” John said, letting out a sigh of relief. “All done.” He glanced up at Sherlock. “You did good, mate.”

Sherlock did his best to smile, which proved to be a feat. He didn’t quite get it right in the end. “I’ll be expecting a lolly from you after the visit,” he said.

John seemed to have an even more difficult time at smiling. He grabbed at Sherlock’s hands, resting heavily in his lap. Sherlock felt as if his limbs were filling with water again, and everything was starting to take a step back from reality. John’s hands felt as if they were happening to someone else, which they usually were. John squeezed at Sherlock’s fingers, the thick latex of his gloves squeaking as he did so. He stared at Sherlock’s hands. Sherlock could see the muscles in John’s jaw working, clenching and unclenching.

“I just got you back,” John said, his voice so quiet for a moment Sherlock wasn’t sure he hadn’t just hallucinated the whole of it.

“John...” Sherlock started, although he wasn’t particularly certain how he intended to end that sentence. Words seemed just beyond him. His tongue was dry and cumbersome.

“I just got you back,” John said again. His words were fading in and out of sound, breaking at their edges. “If I had lost you… If you had...again.” He swallowed, shook his head. “I don’t know what I would have—” His voice gave out on him, a car sputtering out of petrol. He shook his head again. It would appear that was all there was to be of that sentence.

Sherlock shifted his hands under John’s, wrapping his fingers around John’s palms. He wished John didn’t have the gloves on still. He very much wished to feel John’s skin against his. His body felt as if it were being wrapped in warmth, the pain in his chest slowly fading into memory. His brain hummed, and the swarm of thoughts around him turned to fireflies.

_Plan 2: tell him._

_Plan 3: tell him you shagged and it was an apocalypse. Tell him you shagged and it washed through you like a downpour, wiping the slate clean, and now you can’t go back again, can’t find your way back._

_Plan 4: tell him you don’t want this, except that you do. You want this more than anything. Tell him it would be worth this bullet, worth many bullets, to know that he wanted it too. Ask him if he wants it too._

_Plan 5: tell him you came back for him, each time. Tell him you’ll always come back for him, so long as you can help it. Tell him he’s the only thing on this earth worth coming back for._

_Plan 6: tell him you’re dying, and not from the hole in your chest. Tell him the gunshot wound was a welcome distraction. Tell him it pales in comparison to the whole of this._

_Plan 7: tell him to stay. Stay here, at Baker Street where he belongs. Tell him that even though he chose her, even though you said he chose her, that you want him to stop. Stop choosing her. Stay here, instead._

_Plan 1: kiss him._

_Plan 1: kiss him._

_Plan 1: kiss him._

_Plan 1: kiss him._

John cleared his throat. He tugged his hands away from Sherlock’s and worked the gloves off, tossing them into the trash. He pushed Sherlock’s shirt back up his shoulders and started working on the buttons, closing him up bit by bit. His eyes were still on Sherlock’s chest.

“You’re going back to her,” Sherlock said. His voice sounded unfamiliar.

John looked up, jaw dropping open slightly. “I…” He glanced away. “I haven’t made up my mind just yet.”

Sherlock sighed, a noise he hoped would communicate that he was too tired to relay all the ways he could tell that John was lying. “You’re going back to her,” he repeated.

John’s eyes met his, wide and wet. He nodded. “Yeah,” he said. His voice was thick.

Sherlock nodded. He suddenly found it a bit difficult to keep John’s gaze. His chest ached. One by one, the fireflies died.

“She’s my wife,” John said, his voice in pieces. “She’s carrying my child. I...” But he didn’t seem to know what else to say after that.

Sherlock nodded again. His brain suggested morphine, but it was timid, half-hearted. The morphine wouldn’t solve anything, wouldn’t make anything stop hurting. Sherlock waved Plan 17 away. He waved all the plans away, because none of them mattered anymore, none but the one.

_Plan 1: find a way into Appledore and destroy the entirety of Magnussen’s files. If possible, destroy Magnussen along with them._

Right then.

John finished with the buttons. He straightened Sherlock’s collar, brushed some of the wrinkles out of his shirt. If Sherlock didn’t know any better, he would say that John wasn’t ready to stop touching him. However, Sherlock knew better. With effort, John looked up at Sherlock. His brow furrowed.

“You’ve got a look to you,” John said. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” Sherlock said, trying his hand once more at a smile. He seemed to do a bit better with this one. “Just making plans for Christmas.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Virtual hugs and/or high-fives and/or finger-guns!
> 
> Hearts,
> 
> Arwa
> 
> Obligatory Tumblr push: https://arwamachine.tumblr.com/


	5. Whisper to Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mary turned from the cot, leaning her back against the wooden rails as she looked at John. “We aren’t going to be able to do this,” she said, “if you keep being so angry with me.”
> 
> John was still seeing Appledore in his mind’s eye. He thought about the grand display of the house, an extravagant temple housing nothing, boasting of secrets that didn’t exist. He thought about the facade of Leinster Gardens, the posh white exterior meant to blend in with the rest of the street, hiding vacant space just beyond. He thought about empty vaults.
> 
> “That flashdrive,” he said. “The one you gave me, with your initials on it. Was there ever anything on it?”

The room was sickeningly pink.

Everything was bloody pink. The walls were pink. The dresser drawers were pink. The lining on the changing table was pink. The mobile that hung above the cot was pink. Even the stuffed animals that lined the cot were pink, staring back at John with dead eyes and pink grins.

For a moment, John was reasonably certain he was about to have a stroke.

“So,” he said. “It’s a girl, then?”

Mary stepped into the room behind him, rubbing at her sizable stomach. “Clever deduction,” she said. He almost snapped at her for that, for using the word _deduction_. However, they were giving it a go and blowing a fuse over the word _deduction_ didn’t seem like a good way to start things off.

Neither, John thought, did watching one’s best mate get carted off to solitary confinement in a very high-security holding facility after shooting a man in cold blood. They were already at a disadvantage here.

He took a very long, very deep breath. “When did you find out?”

“Oh,” Mary said, looking as if she had to stretch her memory back ages, “a while ago. The scan was at...eighteen weeks, I believe.”

Mary was thirty-seven weeks along at the moment. John didn’t have to be particularly brilliant to do that math.

“Were you planning on telling me,” he asked, “at any point?”

Mary’s face was flat. “We weren’t speaking,” she said. “You weren’t speaking to me.”

“Yeah,” John said, “but I think I might’ve made an exception for the sex of our bloody child, Mary.” He lifted one of the stuffed animals off the cot. A pink octopus. He considered how absolutely ridiculous the idea of a pink octopus was.

“You always could have asked, you know,” Mary said. “I had appointments. Several of them. Checking up on the baby, making sure she was in good health, had all her fingers and toes. You could have asked how she was doing. You could have come with me.”

John stared down at the octopus, frowning. It stared up at him, smiling.

“Instead of playing nursemaid to Sherlock,” Mary added.

“ _Don’t_ ,” he snapped, pointing at her with the octopus dangling from his fist, tentacles flopping. “Not one word about Sherlock. Not after what he did for you. Not after…” The sentence died in his mouth.

Mary raised her hands up at her sides. _I’m unarmed don’t shoot._ She waddled over to the cot and began rearranging the stuffed animals.

After the helicopters landed at Appledore, Sherlock was whisked away immediately. They took John shortly afterwards, and he was subject to an interrogation that felt as if it lasted years. When he asked where Sherlock was, he was told that Sherlock’s whereabouts were none of his concern. John, however, felt as if Sherlock’s whereabouts were exactly his concern, seeing as Sherlock had gotten himself into this mess on John’s behalf. Or, more specifically, on Mary’s behalf. Mycroft told John about the solitary cell and the high-security holding facility nearly in passing as he was being released.

“I’ll see to it that you have an opportunity to bid each other farewell,” Mycroft said as he packed a delirious John into a cab, vanishing before John had the chance to ask him what the hell _that_ meant.

John told the driver to take him to Baker Street and didn’t even realize how daft that was until the cab pulled up outside. He wasn’t meant to live at Baker Street anymore; he was giving it a go with Mary. He ought to have gone back to the flat he and Mary shared, gone home. Except, it rather felt that he _had_ gone home in a way. He chose not to dwell on that feeling, nor did he choose to get back into the cab and head over to Mary. Besides, at this point it was so late at night that it was technically morning, and John could see the hints of a sunrise peeking through the buildings. He was so tired that the steps up into the flat seemed insurmountable, and John was unsure he could make it up all of them.

Anyway, that was the rationale he gave for why he collapsed into Sherlock’s bed and not his own. Sherlock’s was closer. John didn’t even take his shoes off. He was asleep almost immediately.

Seconds later, he was dreaming.

He was standing in front of Barts again, on his mobile. Sherlock was perched on the edge of the roof, telling him to stay where he was.

“It has to be this way, John,” Sherlock’s voice crackled through the mobile. He was crying. John could hear the tears in his voice through the speaker.

“No it doesn’t,” John said. He moved forward. He could move this time—his legs weren’t worthless and stationary—and he flew forward, running into the street.

Mary stepped out in front of him, her face still and serious. She was wearing her wedding dress. She had a gun in her hand.

“Mary,” John said.

“Don’t move,” Mary said. “Stay exactly where you are.”

John froze, blinking at the woman standing in front of him. He remembered thinking that she looked so beautiful in that dress the day of their wedding. He remembered feeling like it was the right decision, marrying her. It was what he wanted, wasn’t it?

“That’s a good boy,” Mary said.

“I’m sorry John,” Sherlock said through the mobile. “Please forgive me.”

John looked up at Sherlock. With the bright sky behind him, he was nothing more than a silhouette atop the roof, hand to his ear as he held his mobile, coat fluttering in the wind. John hadn’t known what his face looked like that day, but it hadn’t stopped him from picturing it thousands of times over the years. Pained. Contorted. Similar, John figured, to the way his own face looked at the moment.

“You’ll have to take your eyes off him now,” Mary said.

John shook his head. “No,” he said. “No.”

He heard a watery sniff crackle through the mobile. A swallow.

“Come, husband,” Mary said. “You promised.”

John stepped forward. “I have to get to him,” he said. “I have to help him.” _I have to save him, Mary. He’ll jump. He’ll jump like he always does._

Mary lifted the gun, pointing it at John’s chest. “Love,” she said. John stopped, wavering in front of the gun. “Honor. Cherish.” Mary released the safety with a click. “Obey.”

“Give my love to Mary,” Sherlock said, his voice shaking through the speaker. “She saved my life.”

“No,” John said. “No she didn’t. That’s bullshit and you know it, Sherlock.” It was the first time he said it out loud, the first time he even dared himself to think it. But no matter what Sherlock said, John knew Sherlock was wrong about this.

“Take your eyes off him, John,” Mary said. Her voice had lost its sweetness. It was steel now, cold and unfamiliar.

“Do as she says, John,” Sherlock said.

John stepped forward, feeling the metal of Mary’s gun press against his chest. “No,” he said. “You don’t understand. I have to help him. He’ll fall, Mary. He’ll fall.”

Mary gave a little smile, an _oh my sweet darling child_ smile. “Oh, John,” she said. “He already has.” With that, she turned and aimed her gun at Sherlock. Before John could react, she fired, the sound cracking through John’s brain. He couldn’t hear himself scream, but he felt the sound as it burned through his throat. Atop the roof, Sherlock’s body jerked, wavered, and pitched forward, soaring through the sky, hurling towards the ground. Mary smiled.

Today, it was the stupid pink octopus smiling up at him, and John found himself incapable of taking his eyes off the thing. He considered that he might have been lucky that he woke up before Sherlock hit the pavement. That sound his body made when he hit, that sound was usually the worst part of the dreams.

“We can repaint in here,” Mary said, straightening the already-straight blankets in the cot. “If you don’t like the pink. Well.” She thought. “ _You_ can. I’ve already painted it once.”

John considered saying something about how she shouldn’t have been cooped up in a tiny room inhaling paint fumes while she was pregnant, but that would just bring them back to the part of the conversation where she reminded him that he hadn’t spoken to her for six months. “It’s _really_ pink,” he said.

“I like the pink,” Mary said, in a tone that usually ended arguments. “But you can paint it if you want.” She smiled, as if this was some sort of olive branch. She nearly killed his best friend—actually _succeeded_ in killing his best friend for a moment—and was the reason that aforementioned best friend was currently in a secure holding facility, awaiting whatever sentence followed voluntary manslaughter. In exchange she was giving him...what? The freedom to let their daughter sleep in a slightly less pink room?

John considered ripping out each of the octopus’ fuzzy pink tentacles, one by one.

There was another dream, immediately after that first one. John blinked and he was back inside the bonfire, surrounded by the smell of pine and smoke and gasoline. What had been so terrifying about that moment, John realized, was how similar it felt to the Barts dream, the one where Sherlock fell and John was powerless to stop him. He had tried to move, but his limbs were dead and useless. He had tried to scream, but his voice was gone. All he could do was lay in a pile of himself, passively watching death approach.

In this dream, however, John had a voice. He called for Sherlock. Sherlock was the only person, John realized, that he would ever call for. He had a vague thought about fire exposing one’s priorities. The thought drifted away from him, carried out upon the billowing smoke.

Then Sherlock was there, ripping away flaming branches and bits of scrap wood. He had John by the shoulders and dragged him out of the fire, screaming his name all the while. Mary was somewhere off in the distance; John thought he could hear the traces of her wails on the wind. He wondered why she wasn’t helping, why it was only Sherlock tugging his body, limp and cumbersome, out from the flames. He found that he didn’t much care. At the moment, all John could see was Sherlock. Sherlock hovered over him, grasping his face in his hands. He looked panicked.

_Look how you care for John Watson._

“Sherlock,” John whispered. His voice was raw. The fire spit behind him.

They weren’t at the bonfire anymore. They were just outside of Appledore, the cool of the tile on Magnussen’s patio pressing against John’s back. The whole of Appledore was on fire, the white of the building slowly blackening as the flames lifted into the sky. The windows had blown out, smoke pouring out of the shattered holes. The place must have caught fire with John still inside. Sherlock had pulled him from the wreckage of the house and was crouched on top of him, his thighs tight against John’s hips.

Across the patio lay Magnussen. He was on his back, his head cocked to the side. Dead, a prim hole in the center of his forehead. His eyes were still open, his glasses slightly askew. His thin lips were still fixed in a smile, and he looked as if he considered John and Sherlock to be endlessly fascinating. However, now the deadness to his eyes was an honesty. All the great knowledge stored in that brain was eviscerated. He was an empty shell, housing nothing.

“Sherlock,” John breathed. “What did you do?”

Sherlock pressed his forehead against John’s. His breaths were heavy on John’s face. They smelled of alcohol. The ground was hard and rough against John’s back. It tore at his jacket. John wrapped his arms around Sherlock. Just behind them, Appledore was burning to the ground, the nothingness its vaults boasted receding into ash. The fire turned the air boiling. Everything was aflame.

Above the roar of the fire, John could hear helicopters approaching. Soon, they would take Sherlock away.

“Come back for me,” John said. His fingers were in Sherlock’s hair. “Come back.”

Sherlock’s eyes were cool water, the only thing keeping John from erupting into flames. The helicopters were much closer now. Harsh propellers stirred the smoke into the air and swept Sherlock’s hair from his forehead. His face was alight from the fire.

“I’ll always come back for you, John,” Sherlock said. “Always.”

The propellers were louder and the smoke was everywhere. John pulled Sherlock close. They had only moments left, John knew, before Sherlock was taken away again. John decided that they would have to go through him first. John decided that if they were to go down in flames, it was best they go down together.

John awakened from that dream with sweat pouring down his body and Sherlock’s pillow clenched in his arms.

Mary turned from the cot, leaning her back against the wooden rails as she looked at John. “We aren’t going to be able to do this,” she said, “if you keep being so angry with me.”

John was still watching Appledore burn in his mind’s eye. He thought about the grand display of the house, an extravagant temple housing nothing, boasting of secrets that didn’t exist. He thought about the facade of Leinster Gardens, the posh white exterior meant to blend in with the rest of the street, hiding vacant space just beyond. He thought about empty vaults. His fingers dug into the octopus.

“That flashdrive,” he said. “The one you gave me, with your initials on it. Was there ever anything on it?”

He didn’t dare look up at Mary, but he could hear her smile.

John’s mouth was suddenly dry. “There wasn’t,” he said. “Was there?”

“Would you have looked at it, even if there was?” Mary asked. That smile was still on her face. She rubbed at her belly.

John felt that if he clenched his jaw any harder his teeth would shatter. He nodded. It all made sense, now that he thought about it. It all made perfect sense. “Right. So. The problems of your past, then…”

“Are mine,” Mary said. She moved forward, plucked the stuffed octopus from his hands. She placed it in the center of the cot, amidst the line of stuffed toys and other pink things. She smiled at her handiwork, proud of herself. She started moving towards the door. John considered that he could tear this room to the ground if given the chance.

“I want to name the baby,” John said.

Mary turned, hand still on her belly. “Oh?” she asked. “I thought we’d already discussed that.”

"I want to name the baby,” John repeated. There was more he could say here, things about how she had lied to him from the start and shot his best friend and taken the aforementioned best friend from his life after he just got him back and he was going to try to give it a go with her, try with all his might, but she was still, _still_ lying to him. He decided not to say these things, if at all possible.

Mary sighed. “Right,” she said. “What did you have in mind?”

“Catherine,” John said. “It was my grandmother’s name. I always thought—” he scratched at his head. “I’d always wanted—if I ever became a dad, had a daughter… I thought it’d be nice to name a child after her.”

Mary thought about it. She rubbed at her belly. “Alright,” she said. “We’ll name the baby Catherine, then.” Her voice sounded hollow—a shell. Empty vaults.

“Thank you,” John said, although he was a bit unsure why he was thanking her at the moment.

Mary smiled, nodded. Then she waddled out of the room, leaving John to drown in the pink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys are amazing and your comments fill my soul with joy :) Thank you thank you thank you for reading!
> 
> Hearts,
> 
> Arwa
> 
> (obligatory Tumblr plug: https://arwamachine.tumblr.com/)


	6. Dance Away All of the Lights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock hoped he would spend his time in 1895 looking for a murderous ghost. This was much, much worse.

Wiggins had really outdone himself this time.

Sherlock had a fairly sizable request and a very small window of time for Wiggins to get everything together. Sherlock was prepared for a certain level of disappointment. Indeed, he wasn’t so much interested in the quality of Wiggins’ concoctions; he merely wanted oblivion. In his experience, Wiggins could deliver on oblivion. However, as the substance started setting in mere seconds after the plane lifted off the desolate tarmac, Sherlock felt the effects begin to seep into his body and realized that Wiggins delivered on quality as well. To Sherlock, it seemed an excellent way to begin his exile. If he had any say in the matter, it would be _Goodnight Vienna_ before the wheels even touched ground in eastern Europe.

Of course, the situation changed somewhat four minutes after the plane took off.

The problem with drugs, of course, is that one cannot simply tell one’s brain to ignore their effects and go on functioning as if nothing were happening. One can try, but in Sherlock’s experience success is limited. In these circumstances, it is best to just hold on and go where one’s brain takes one.

As it turned out, Sherlock’s brain took him to 1895.

1895 was far preferable to the setting of his past week, which consisted entirely of the four blank walls of a holding cell. His food was slipped through a hole in the door by a wordless guard, and his time allotted outside of the cell for exercise was negligible, especially after the first day Sherlock made a guard cry by deducing his family medical history, which contained a surprising amount of syphilis. Ordinarily the solitude wouldn’t be much of a bother, but Sherlock was finding his Mind Palace a bit of a minefield at the moment. All lines of thought seemed to trace back to John. All settings were places he and John had been together. And then there was John himself, popping into being and attempting conversation, infuriatingly unaware that his presence was not wanted. Over and over and over again.

Sherlock opted to stare at a blank wall. It was not helpful for one’s sanity, but it seemed to be the lesser of two evils, at least until Sherlock could make contact with Wiggins. And now that Wiggins had delivered, Sherlock’s Mind Palace was seemingly the only place he could be.

“Holmes,” a voice sounded. “Are you purposefully ignoring me?”

Sherlock blinked his eyes open and it was 1895. Nighttime surrounded him, and the air smelled thick with dirt and flowers. An expansive window sat before him, through which he could make out a rather impressive manor flanked on all sides by large trees. All the windows were dark; the house slept.

John sat in front of him, although he preferred Sherlock to refer to him as _Watson_ in this particular corner of Sherlock’s mind, the 1895 corner. He wore a ridiculous moustache and bowler hat and looked at Sherlock with concern.

“Holmes,” he repeated, a bit louder than necessary given their purposes. “I asked you a question. Are you ignoring me?”

Sherlock shushed him. “I am merely of the opinion that having a thunderous conversation while trying to remain hidden from any potential burglars is quite counterproductive to our purposes,” he said.

John sighed and shifted in his seat. “Do you really think the apparition will appear?” he asked.

Right. That was what they were doing here. Sitting watch in a greenhouse, waiting for the ghost of Emelia Ricoletti to manifest and murder a man—that dreadful Sir Eustice. Sherlock once again considered that Wiggins had done a splendid job. Should he ever have the opportunity to lay eyes on him again, he would have to pay him a compliment. Wiggins would like that; he did so love to please. He reminded Sherlock a bit of John in that way, something about which Sherlock tried very hard not to think.

“Probably not,” Sherlock said, “considering that ghosts—I am afraid to report, my dear Watson—are not real.”

“Right,” John said. “How long do you intend to hide out here, then?”

“Until there is a murder to investigate,” Sherlock said. “Or the sun rises. Whichever occurs first.”

“No,” John said, sounding a bit impatient. “I don’t mean this greenhouse. I mean _here._ ” He gestured around him.

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at John. “Your use of language, as always, leaves something to be desired, Watson.”

“Victorian London,” John said. “1895. This particular corner of your Mind Palace. A drug-induced stupor. Whichever descriptive language you find preferable. The question remains. How long,” John leaned forward, insistent, “do you intend to hide out here?”

“Until I solve the case,” Sherlock said.

“The case,” John repeated. “The one-hundred-and-twenty-year-old case that won’t make a lick of difference if it goes unsolved or not. That case?”

Sherlock sighed. “Moriarty—”

“Is dead,” John said. “He’s dead. You saw him die. He’s not alive. He’s not back. And you know that, Holmes.”

Sherlock stared out the window. The manor remained dark, silent. The night was still. The only sounds were his own breathing and John’s insistent whispers. He wondered how John managed to follow him to 1895. John—at least the John in his Mind Palace—seemed keen on following him everywhere as of late and Sherlock was growing weary of it.

“Solving this case from one hundred and twenty years in the past,” John continued, “will solve nothing in the present. All it does is distract you from what is really going on.”

Sherlock glared at John. This version of him was really quite noisy. “And what, pray tell, is _really going on,_ Watson?”

“You know,” John said. His ridiculous moustache twitched with his words.

“Apparently,” Sherlock said, rapidly losing patience, “I don’t.”

“Why are you ignoring me, Holmes?” John asked.

Sherlock sighed, exasperated. “I would argue that the mere fact of me entertaining this needless conversation with you proves that I am not _ignoring_ you.”

“Not me,” John said. “Not _this_ me, anyway. The other me. The one out there.” John gestured vaguely into the outside world.

Sherlock thought of the other John, the one standing on the tarmac, barely able to meet his eyes. He made that John laugh once more right before he boarded the plane, before the drugs kicked in. It was a good laugh, a good smile. Bright and beaming. It reminded Sherlock of that night, the stag night, and for once the memory had been alright because it was likely to be one of his last.

“Again,” Sherlock said, “I would hardly say that I’m _ignoring_ —”

“You are purposefully choosing,” John said, “to ignore what this means. What _I_ mean. To you.”

Sherlock found he had little to say on the matter, so he said nothing. This did little to support his argument that he was not ignoring anything.

John waved a hand in front of himself. _Case and point._

“I am afraid to tell you,” Sherlock said, “that your analysis of the situation has led you to erroneous conclusions. It wouldn’t be the first time—surely you must be used to it by now.”

“Holmes.” John seemed particularly annoyed at this point. “I exist entirely within your own mind. If I have come to erroneous conclusions, it is only because you led me there. However, I believe that both you and I know that my conclusions are sound. The only point of confusion is why you refuse to listen.”

In the distance, Sherlock heard a rumble of what sounded like thunder. He furrowed his brow. He didn’t think it was meant to rain tonight.

“In my humble opinion,” John continued. “There is only one case of interest for you to solve tonight. The Case of the Detective in Denial.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “As always,” he said. “Your titles are abysmal.”

“ _Damnit_ , Holmes,” John snapped, his voice bouncing off the glass walls of the greenhouse. “You cannot be so daft as to think these deflections of yours could possibly go on working forever.” He exhaled, regrouped. “When you look at me, Holmes, what do you see?”

Sherlock gritted his teeth. He considered John. “My colleague,” he said, “Doctor John Watson.”

John’s moustache twitched again. “An annoyingly literal answer, Holmes. Might we try again? Expel a little effort this time? When you look at me,” John gestured down at his body, “what do you see?”

Sherlock sighed. He studied John again. “My friend and colleague,” he said. He felt his face give a little twitch. “My friend,” he repeated. He sighed. “My best friend, Doctor John Watson. The man I—” he stopped, thought. “The man whose opinion I admire greatly.”

“The man who you wish would name his daughter after you?” John asked.

Sherlock grimaced. “Not exactly.”

“Doesn’t take a genius consulting detective to come to that conclusion,” John said. “Let’s keep trying, shall we? When you look at me, what do you think of?”

Sherlock supposed that this game was likely to continue, considering that it was taking place in his own head and even so he was powerless to stop it.

“I think of my friend and colleague—”

“I swear to Christ above, Holmes,” John spat. “You are to take this line of inquiry seriously.”

A faint spray of rain began falling just outside the greenhouse, tiny droplets pitter-pattering against the thick glass.

Sherlock glared at John. “Fine,” he said. “I think of…” he studied John, the whole of him. Even with his moustache and bowler hat, his graying hair and tired eyes, he looked a force to be reckoned with. He was sturdy and loyal and constant, a conductor of light and warmth at Sherlock’s side. “Cases,” Sherlock said. “I think of cases. I think of the work.”

John waved a hand in front of him. _Go on._

“I think of racing through the city streets until our hearts feel as if they’re likely to burst,” Sherlock said. “I think of reducing criminals to stuttering, dumbfounded messes. I think of behaving at crime scenes in a manner that you continuously remind me is inappropriate. I think of London and Baker Street and…” he swallowed. “Home. When I see you, I think of home, John.”

John smiled. The corners of his moustache twitched upwards, brushing at his cheeks. “Good,” he said. “Now. When you look at me, what do you feel?”

Outside the greenhouse, the rain increased in volume. The drops were thicker, rustling the greenery and landing on the ground with wet splatters. The thick smell of earth increased, filling Sherlock’s nostrils. It was the smell of mud and worms, of green and regrowth.

Sherlock studied the rain outside the window. “You know all emotion is abhorrent to me, Watson,” he said.

“However abhorrent it may be,” John said, “you _feel_ it, Holmes.”

“Certainly all human beings experience emotion to some degree,” Sherlock said to the window. “It is a biological process, after all. I, however, have learned to rise above my more biologically basic processes in order to—”

“Holmes,” John said, “you are lying to yourself and lying to me and at this rate we’ll be in this greenhouse all bloody night. You are no more immune to emotional experience than ice is immune to fire. The difference with you is your bullheaded refusal to acknowledge it. Now. When you said goodbye to me—the other me—on that tarmac, what did you feel?”

Sherlock’s lips tightened. His gaze remained fixed out the window. “Pain,” he said. It seemed like an understatement, but the sick, rib-crushing thing he felt as he said goodbye to John and boarded the plane seemed to defy definition. Fortunately for him, he had learned a trick or two to make the pain go away. Rather, Wiggins had learned a trick or two and Sherlock paid him handsomely for the proof.

“And when you learned of Moriarty’s supposed return,” John said, “what did you feel then?”

Lightning split through the sky, momentarily filling the greenhouse with a crackling, white light. Thunder rumbled towards them, a dull roar. A gust of wind drove the rain into the windows with increased vigor.

“Joy,” said Sherlock.

"Why?” asked John, who already knew the answer. “Why joy, Holmes?”

Sherlock forced himself to look at John. John’s mouth was a tight line, his eyes tired yet intent. He knew what Sherlock was going to say but very much needed to hear him say it. “You,” Sherlock said. “Moriarty’s return meant I could come back to you.”

“Pain at leaving me,” John said. “Joy at coming back to me. Perhaps these phenomena are related?”

Sherlock’s jaw tensed. He had hoped he would spend his time in 1895 looking for a murderous ghost. This was much, much worse.

“Holmes,” John leaned forward. “What you feel. It is not simple, by any means, but it is not dangerous and it is not a disadvantage and it is certainly not _destructive_ unless you choose to make it so.”

“I don’t,” Sherlock said.

“You don’t…?”

“That thing you’re suggesting I feel,” Sherlock nodded at John. “I don’t.”

John shook his head. He gave him a disbelieving, impatient look.

_Fine._ “I can’t,” Sherlock said.

“And why can’t you?” John asked.

Outside, the rain turned to a sheet. Water pelted the glass, vibrating the whole of the greenhouse. The rain washed down the sides of the building in thick rivulets, obscuring the manor that lay beyond.

“It’ll ruin me,” Sherlock said, his voice loud over the assault of the rain outside. “It’ll ruin everything I’ve worked for. Everything I stand for. The life of logic and reason that permits me to excel in this world, to craft work that stimulates my brain like nothing else, to survive long after others have fallen prey to their own weaknesses.” Another bolt of lightning lit the greenhouse. John seemed unperturbed by the whole of it. “So you see, Watson,” Sherlock said. “I cannot _feel_ for you.” The word left his lips as if made of something bitter.

“Holmes,” John said, looking very much as if he were reminding a child how to tie their shoelaces for the eighth time. “If it was to ruin you it would have done so long ago.”

Sherlock furrowed his brow. Thunder crashed through the air. The glass of the greenhouse shook.

“How long?” John asked.

A branch slapped against the window. Sherlock thought he heard the sound of glass splintering.

“How long,” John asked, “would you wager you’ve loved me?”

Sherlock shook his head. He grasped at his hair. “I don’t,” he said. “I never have. This is all just an idea. An idea planted after we—” He shook his head again, fingers digging into his scalp. “And now it cannot be killed.”

"That is an astounding oversimplification,” John said, his voice barely audible over the roar of the rain. “It is far greater than an idea and it began long before we shagged. Tell me, Holmes—how long?”

The storm raged around them, the downpour attacking the building with fury. Branches clattered against the windows. The greenhouse was shaking, glass vibrating madly. It seemed as if the whole building was about to come down around them. Sherlock rather hoped it would slice his head wide open.

“How long, Holmes?”

Sherlock pressed his hands over his ears. The rain sounded like a freight train and the glass was cracking at the edges and the lightning was constant and he couldn’t _think._ He needed to _think._ He needed to get out of this greenhouse, get out of 1895, get out of this wild predicament he had found himself in. He took back all the compliments he was prepared to shower upon Wiggins—this, as it turned out, was torture.

“ _Holmes_.” John was shouting now. It was all that could be done to be heard over the din. “ _How long?_ ”

“ _Since the very beginning,_ ” Sherlock shouted. “ _Since the first goddamned moment I saw you, John_.”

The glass shattered. The storm tore through the whole of the greenhouse and the windows exploded. Glass shards rained down upon them. John dove for Sherlock, pulling him down to the ground and covering him with his arms, his body. The water pelted upon them, drenching them nearly instantaneously. Sheets of water screamed across Sherlock’s back, driving him into the ground. He clutched at John. The both of them were shouting something indistinct.

The ground underneath them turned jagged, uneven. Rocks dug into Sherlock’s knees. He lifted himself out of John’s arms, looked around. The world had fallen down around them, the manor gone, the trees vanished, the greenhouse destroyed. It looked as if they were at the very edge of the earth, perched at the side of a screaming waterfall. The Reichenbach Falls, Sherlock knew. The spot where he and Moriarty once tipped over the edge, back in 1891.

A white line of panic shot through Sherlock. He pushed himself backwards on his knees, shoving John away from the spray of the falls. John would need to run soon. “Moriarty,” Sherlock said. “He’s here.”

John shook his head. His hat was drenched and wrinkled, sagging over his temples. His moustache was plastered to his face. “No, Holmes,” John said. “Moriarty is dead. He’s not coming back. This is about you and me.”

“No,” Sherlock said. John didn’t understand—he couldn’t be here; he was in danger. “You have to leave.” He swallowed. “I don’t want you here.”

“Don’t you understand by now, Holmes?” John shouted, blinking through the water streaming down his face. “I’m not going anywhere. You can’t be rid of me, no matter how you try. You can’t be rid of what you feel.”

Behind Sherlock, the falls roared. A gust of frigid mist blew off the water, chilling him to the bone. Water pooled on the rocks by his knees.

“I can be rid of whatever I wish,” Sherlock said, his voice shaking from the cold. “I have control over my mind, John. I have say over what stays and leaves.” Even as he spoke the words, he knew they weren’t quite true.

John moved closer, kneeling just in front of Sherlock.

“You love me, Holmes,” John said, his breath a puff of fog in the cold air. “This isn’t something you can forget. This isn’t something you can pretend doesn’t exist.”

“John…” Sherlock started, although he didn’t have the rest of his sentence quite worked out yet.

John tore the sopping bowler hat off his head, tossing it to the side without a glance. His hair underneath was clumped and disheveled, already wet from the falls. “You’ve been running from this since the start,” John said. “Since the moment you met me. You have been pretending to be some cold, unfeeling machine, and doing an abysmal job at it, by all accounts.”

“I’ve not been—” Sherlock started.

“When you fell,” John said. “When you pitched yourself off that building, who was it for?”

Sherlock’s mouth closed.

“And two years later,” John said. “When you reappeared in London after being gone, why did you return? And not the terrorist attack—you didn’t give a lick about that. Why did you really return?”

Sherlock looked down at the rocks beneath his knees. His trousers were drenched and clinging to his skin.

“And when you were shot,” John continued. “When you were laying in your own blood, fading out and dead, why did you come back?”

Sherlock said nothing, because of course John already knew the answer. They both did. The rush of water screamed behind him. The whole world was freezing and John’s body, so close to his, was the only warm thing.

“So tell me, Holmes,” John said, gripping at Sherlock’s arms. “When we shagged, is that when this idea was allegedly planted, like some sort of virus in your brain? Or did we shag because you’ve always known? Did we shag because you’ve wanted everything from me since the moment you saw me and were finally tired of pretending you didn’t? Did we shag because you’ve loved me for ages and needed desperately to show me in a way I understood?”

“John,” Sherlock said, but he had nothing else to say aside from John’s name anymore. The water from the falls had gotten into his eyes and it stung. It washed down his cheeks and tasted like salt in his mouth.

“Don’t you see, Holmes?” John said, his face breaking, needing. “This isn’t something you can run from—not through the drugs, not through the cases, not even through disappearing into the back corners of your bloody Mind Palace. This isn’t trivia, Holmes.” He placed a hand against Sherlock’s chest, his palm warm against the sopping fabric of his suit. “This is your heart.” He grasped the clammy fabric in his fist, tugging Sherlock closer. “I’m in your heart,” he said. “I always have been.”

Sherlock surged forward and met John’s mouth with violence, because John was right, of course. He was right and it was terrible. All along, it would seem as if Sherlock were asking himself the wrong questions. It was never a question of whether Sherlock felt for John, or what specifically he felt for John—rather, it was a question of how much Sherlock felt for John, and for how long. And the answers, of course, were clear— _very, very much_ and _very, very long_.

John’s lips parted with a moan and Sherlock was inside, tongue tasting the damned _John_ flavor that he could never delete from his mind. John wrapped his arms around Sherlock and pulled him close and Sherlock hoped he might never let go, that the two of them could stay pressed against each other in this corner of his Mind Palace forever. Sherlock could hear himself making desperate noises against John’s mouth. He ought to be embarrassed, but found that he didn’t much care at the moment.

Moriarty was dead, shot in the head by his own gun. Sir Eustice was dead, stabbed in the heart with an ornate dagger. Emelia Ricoletti—the Bride—was dead as well, dead and long since rotted in her grave. However, Sherlock wasn’t dead, no matter how he tried. Sherlock would live through all of this, brain firing and blood pumping and heart wrenching itself out of his body. He didn’t care about Moriarty. He didn’t care about Sir Eustice or the Bride or any of it. There was only one thing in this whole business that he found interesting and he had it in his arms at the moment, pressed against his lips and gasping into his mouth.

“Good Christ, John,” Sherlock whispered. “I don’t wish to feel this way about you.”

John separated from him just far enough to look at him. It wasn’t 1895 John anymore, but the other John, the John who stood on the tarmac with him, who Sherlock made laugh while his heart was breaking. His greying hair was plastered to his head and his well-shaved face was slick with water and his checkered shirt was soaked through. He smiled up at Sherlock, the blue of his eyes shining through the mist of the falls.

“We can’t change how we feel, Sherlock,” he said. “It is written in indelible ink.”

Sherlock kissed him again, holding John’s face in his hands as the falls roared around them. He bit at John’s lips and John grinned against him. Somewhere behind Sherlock, a rock dislodged itself from the cliff face. It bounced into the water below.

“Do you think you could ever…” Sherlock breathed, his eyes closed and his forehead pressed to John’s, “for me?”

John’s hands gripped Sherlock’s face. They were cold and wet. Sherlock could feel John swallow, his lips still so close. Sherlock didn’t dare open his eyes, couldn’t look at the expression on John’s face.

“That line of inquiry is irrelevant,” Sherlock said. “Isn’t it? It doesn’t much matter how you feel, or how I feel, does it?”

John nodded against him.

“Because of Mary,” Sherlock said. “And the baby.”

John nodded again. Sherlock could feel his breath against his lips, shaking. Another rock broke free and tumbled away from the cliff face, a larger one this time.

Sherlock felt as though all the shards of glass from the greenhouse had lodged themselves in his throat. He had half a mind to pitch himself off the falls. The jagged rocks below seemed forgiving in comparison to this.

“None of that means,” John whispered, “that I _can’t_ feel the same, Sherlock.”

“And do you?” Sherlock asked. He couldn’t hear his own words over the spray of the falls, the screaming in his ears.

“I don’t know,” John said. “Or rather, _you_ don’t know.”

Sherlock had a go at a chuckle. It was unsuccessful. “Not a very helpful answer.”

“It’s the only one you’ve got at the moment,” John said. “And you can’t go about finding the real answer back in 1895.” John’s fingers tightened around Sherlock’s face. “Time to wake up, Sherlock.”

The cliffside shuddered. A large section of rock split off from the mountain with a crack, crashing down into the water below. The falls were slowly destroying the whole of the mountain. Soon, it would all be washed away.

Sherlock shook his head. “No,” he said, pressing his lips to John’s in a sloppy approximation of a kiss. His hands roamed across John’s face, fingers tracing along his eyes, his cheeks, his jaw. “You’re here. I have you here with me.” He wrapped his arms around John, buried his face in John’s neck. “I have you,” he said into John’s drenched collar.

John’s arms tightened along Sherlock’s back. He dug his fingers into the sopping fabric of Sherlock’s shirt. A crack tore through the rocks just behind him. “I know,” he said. “But you can’t stay here forever. You have to go back. You have to go back to the other me. If I know him, he’ll be waiting for you. He’ll be worried.”

Sherlock heard a section of the cliff separate with a crack and tumble down into the falls behind him and knew John was right. Still, he shook his head.

“I can’t,” Sherlock said. “You—the other you—you don’t know. You can’t know. And I don’t think I can bear it, you not knowing,” he swallowed, “how I’ve fallen.”

The cliff rumbled. The ground fell away just a few steps behind where the two of them crouched, clasping at each other.

“I don’t think you’ve got much of a choice, Sherlock,” John said, his thumbs running over Sherlock’s cheekbones. “Besides,” the side of his mouth twitched in a smile, “I have a feeling you’ll survive the fall.” He pressed his lips to Sherlock’s. His breath was warm amidst the frigid spray. “It’ll just hurt like hell,” he said.

The whole of the mountain shook. The rocks fell apart in chunks, tearing the land apart in eager strokes. The spray from the falls bore down upon the two men. Water streamed down Sherlock’s face. His eyes burned. He could barely see John in front of him, doing his best not to look sad. They had seconds, at most, before the world fell down around them.

“Stay with me,” Sherlock said.

John smiled. “Until the very end,” he said.

Sherlock pulled John close and sank his mouth into John’s and John whimpered and dug his fingers into Sherlock’s hair and the cliff fell out from under them, rocks breaking apart with a shuddering crack, sending the both of them tumbling towards the churning water below. Adrenaline surged through Sherlock’s body and his heart hammered and his brain screamed and he didn’t let go of John, not for a second. When they hit the water, plunging into the unforgiving waves, it hurt like hell.

~ ~ ~

Sherlock knew he was back on the plane before he even opened his eyes. It was the air—that stale smell of overused oxygen with a faint hint of jet fuel that not even Mycroft’s fancy private planes could do away with. The freezing rush of water was gone, along with the roar of the falls and the snapping of rocks around him. There was only a warm silence, punctuated briefly by the soft breaths of the people crouched around him.

Sherlock opened his eyes and there was John, staring down at him with a look of worry that the John in his Mind Palace promised he would feel. His hand rested on Sherlock’s shoulder, as if trying to physically keep him in this version of reality. His lips lifted into a smile that was tiny and weak but managed to reach his eyes nonetheless and Sherlock almost told him the whole of it. He almost took John’s face in his hands and dragged him down onto his mouth and told him that he had never loved anyone or anything half as much as he loved John in this moment, in all the moments, in the whole of his life, however many lives he had. He almost told John that he was right—the version of him in his Mind Palace—about the falling hurting like hell, somehow hurting worse than a bullet through his chest, but it had all been alright in the end because John was there when Sherlock landed. He almost told John to stay, to stay with him and only him, until the very end.

Then Mycroft cleared his throat.

Sherlock looked over at Mycroft, who was glaring at him with a mixture of disappointment and rage that only his brother would have taken the time to perfect over the years. Then he looked at Mary. Mary sat across from Sherlock, leaning forward as she studied him, her large coat draped over her very pregnant belly. Her face was unreadable, and Sherlock figured that there was an equal probability that she knew nothing as there was that she knew everything.

“Hello,” Sherlock said.

Mary’s expression didn’t change. Mycroft only looked angrier. Sherlock tilted his head back towards John.

John smiled.

Sherlock smiled back. “Miss you,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is the end of the canon-compliant portion of the fic. It is not, however, the end of the angst.
> 
> Thank you for reading! The world is strange but you are amazing!
> 
> Hearts,
> 
> Arwa
> 
> (Look! A Tumblr! https://arwamachine.tumblr.com/)


	7. All Ripe for Dreaming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John was done pretending like he wasn’t going to touch himself tonight.

John woke up to the sound of screaming.

Just over three months in and he was used to it at this point. It was how he tended to wake up at ten o’clock, and then again just after midnight, and then again at three in the morning, and then again at six, although by that point he was up for the day. It was Rosie’s favorite way to wake up—screaming.

Next to him, Mary made an infuriated noise. She didn’t move, but her groan shook the mattress.

John had been dreaming. He was always dreaming these days, it seemed. It was the sleep deprivation, he reminded himself. His exhausted body dipped right into REM sleep as soon as he closed his eyes, desperate for the restorative type of shut-eye it had been denied ever since Rosie came into the world. John also reminded himself that sleep deprivation tends to make one’s dreams a bit weird. In an effort to reap the benefits of the REM cycle it had heretofore been denied, the brain goes a bit off-kilter with the dreaming. That’s all it was, really.

Rosie, apparently convinced that she was not being quite loud enough yet, let out a scream that knifed its way right into John’s eardrums. She could rattle your brain loose, that child.

Which scream was this, then? John checked his phone. Ah. This would be the three in the morning scream. The three in the morning scream was probably John’s least favorite.

“Fucking _hell,_ ” Mary muttered.

John ran his hands over his face. “I’ll get her,” he said, heaving himself off the bed.

Mary said nothing. She didn’t move. She seemed to be partway back to sleep before John even left the room.

In truth, John was still a bit dazed from his dream, and more than a little dismayed to find that he was still partially hard in his pants. However, the sound of a screaming infant is one of the most effective arousal-killers John ever encountered, and his erection threw its hands in the air and quit before he even got to Rosie’s bedroom. It had been an odd dream. John could use the change of scenery.

In her cot, Rosie was red-faced and flailing at the air. She had really taken to kicking recently and was having quite the go of it, her little legs attacking nothing. John did some mental math. She had her last meal a little before midnight and was changed shortly after. She was due for another feeding. Her pediatrician said that they could start weaning her off one of these nighttime feedings soon and John personally couldn’t wait. Living with an infant reminded John more than a little of living with Sherlock in those early days, complete with the erratic sleep schedule and nodding off at work and catering to the every need of a fussy enigma of a human for whom John was inexplicably willing to die at the drop of a hat.

Rosie wailed and John lifted her out of her crib, making little cooing noises. It didn’t change much, but John at least felt as if he were trying to do something about the situation. He sang her name softly to her. _Rosie, why do you evade? Rosie, how can I persuade?_

Mary hadn’t exactly told John that they’d be naming her Rosie. It just sort of happened. In retrospect, he ought to have known that Catherine was off the table once Mary declined to name her at the hospital.

 _We’re still thinking about it,_ Mary told the doctors, smiling.

 _We are?_ John asked, smiling as well because it seemed like everyone was smiling at the moment.

And then—just like that—she wasn’t Catherine at all, but Rosamund. Rosie for short. Another olive branch rescinded. At least John had gotten to repaint the nursery. Pale green instead of screaming pink. Much better for the three o’clock headaches.

John didn’t put up a fuss about her name. He didn’t have the energy for a proper fuss. He didn’t have the energy for much of anything with Mary these days. Sleep deprivation, he reminded himself.

Besides, the baby looked like a Rosie and she liked it when he sang to her.

Rosie quieted down a bit, forsaking the brain-rattling screams for needy whimpers. He walked with her into the kitchen to warm up her bottle, wishing he had enough forethought to bring his mobile with him. He had an urge to text Sherlock that seemed impossible to tamp down at the moment. Sherlock kept hours that were surprisingly similar to Rosie’s since he returned from his four minutes of exile, complete with countless naps, time spent horizontal and staring at the ceiling, and bouts of confusing fussiness.

John was more than a little worried about Sherlock as of late.

~ ~ ~

Sherlock couldn’t sleep.

Sleep was unpredictable these days. Sometimes it descended upon him like fog and he woke days later, the seam of the sofa cushion imprinted upon his cheek and Mrs. Hudson hovering over him with a worried face. Other times it evaded him completely and he was left awake for what felt like years, staring at the walls or the ceiling or the floor or Mrs. Hudson’s worried face. It was maddening. It hadn’t yet stopped him from trying, however, and he was currently laying in his bed, staring defiantly at the ceiling. He held his mobile in his hand. He was _not_ going to text John.

After Sherlock’s four-minute exile and subsequent pardon, it took him about a week to discover that Moriarty’s return was nothing more than some hare-brained hoax. It shouldn’t even have taken him that long—an afternoon likely would have sufficed—but he couldn't seem to be bothered to expel very much energy as of late. He had also been somewhat distracted upon returning to Baker Street and discovering that John spent a night in his bed in his absence. Sherlock had burrowed into his bed and wrapped the covers around him and sunk his face into the pillow and hadn’t left until he was reasonably certain that the smell of John was gone. Even still, he found himself spending more time in his bed than he ever had in the past.

Sherlock had never been one for the rhetoric that comes with the concept of romance. He found the idea of _heartbreak_ to be so medically and physiologically inaccurate as to be mind-boggling. He thought that any individuals suffering ill effects from _unrequited love_ were merely in need of a full psychiatric evaluation. He found the act of _pining_ to be on par with wearing a tin hat to protect oneself from little grey aliens. Allowing one’s mood and activities to be so negatively impacted by an abstract emotional construct, Sherlock always thought, was a near-textbook definition of insanity. As such, Sherlock was fairly displeased with himself at the moment.

John was worried about him. John wasn’t alone, either—it seemed everyone had taken up the hobby of being worried about Sherlock these days. Mrs. Hudson was worried, Molly was worried, Lestrade was worried. Sherlock reasoned that Lestrade had the biggest reason to be worried—Sherlock hadn’t taken on any cases as of late and, as a result, Lestrade’s career would suffer. Sherlock hoped the whole ordeal would teach Lestrade that he ought to be a more competent detective inspector and not rely on Sherlock all the bloody time. Sherlock wished, more than nearly anything else, to be left alone.

Sherlock was _not_ going to text John.

It was when Mycroft started worrying that Sherlock wondered if his mental health wasn’t getting objectively questionable. In the three months since Sherlock returned from exile, Mycroft ordered four drugs searches in his flat. They turned up nothing, of course. For once, Sherlock was convinced that being high wouldn’t solve his problems, seeing as being high didn’t exactly prevent Mind Palace John from showing up and reminding Sherlock, in no uncertain terms, precisely how he felt and how heartbreakingly futile the situation was. Staring at the ceiling, completely sober, was mind-numbingly dull, but at least Sherlock didn’t feel like he’d had his ribs cracked open afterwards.

 _Why aren’t you taking on cases?_ John asked him one afternoon, sitting across from him while Sherlock curled himself into a ball in his chair and willed unconsciousness to descend upon him.

 _What’s the point?_ Sherlock said, although he realized that he said it much, much later and John had already left. And _that_ was the point, wasn’t it? John was gone. Working cases without John only made Sherlock aware of John’s absence and, counterintuitively, so did working cases _with_ John. Shortly after Sherlock’s brief exile, back when he still thought he could take cases, he and John had been out at some murder or another and John was crouched over, examining the body, and it was all Sherlock could do not to push John over and rut against him until John came screaming Sherlock’s name. Sherlock was fully erect in his trousers and couldn’t remember the term _putrefaction_ for Christ’s sake and at the end of it all John went home to Mary and Sherlock went home to lie in his bed alone.

Sherlock was _not_ going to text John.

It only took a few instances of _that_ before Sherlock wondered if bringing John along on cases wasn’t a smart idea anymore. Not that John had very much time to tag along on cases after the baby came, anyway. Sherlock worked a few cases alone and was blindsided by how much he missed John. He called at least three of Lestrade’s forensic officers _John_ by accident and overlooked a fairly prominent tattoo on a victim’s wrist before Lestrade asked if he was alright and Sherlock promptly left the scene, returning home to lie in his bed alone.

It was a real damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t scenario, and Sherlock wished that Moriarty _had_ been back and brought a whole team of snipers with him because a swift bullet to the brain sounded lovely.

As such, it seemed like the wisest move was to not take on cases for the moment. This was for the best, considering Sherlock’s willingness to engage in voluntary movement was at an all-time low. He found himself coming around to an understanding of Mycroft’s distaste for legwork; legs were supremely overrated. Still, this left Sherlock with very little to do with his free time except wait for sleep to choose to grace him with its presence and _not_ text John.

Which, incidentally, was exactly what he _wasn’t_ going to do at the moment.

~ ~ ~

John was seated in the wooden rocker in Rosie’s room, Rosie resting in the crook of his arm as she enjoyed her bottle, when a disgruntled Mary trudged into the room. She tossed his mobile at him, nearly smacking Rosie in the arm with the thing.

“Your other wife,” she said.

John turned the mobile in his hand, doing his best to balance Rosie and the bottle as he saw Sherlock’s text illuminate the screen. He tried not to look overjoyed. Mary turned and walked back towards the bedroom. John heard the door close behind her with perhaps a little more force than was needed.

_The Case of the Arthritic Arsonist. SH_

_Suggestion for a title. SH_

John smiled. He had no idea what Sherlock was on about, but then he rarely did. He did his best to respond without jostling Rosie too much.

_New case?_

_Old case. SH_

_I believe you titled it, “The Adventure of the Weeping Widow” on your blog. SH_

_My title is far superior. SH_

John was surprised by how happy he was to be talking to Sherlock at the moment, even if all Sherlock was doing was criticizing his choice of titles. After Rosie was born, John had much less free time to spend with Sherlock, and he found himself missing him quite a bit. Sherlock had been in a confusing mood since returning from his brief exile, spending much of his time curled onto his chair or the sofa or his bed, despondent. John tried to stop by as often as he could, but sometimes he got the feeling that his presence only made the matter worse. It made him ache in a way he didn’t fully understand.

_We did that case years ago. It’s been on the blog for ages. Are you just getting around to reading it, you git?_

_Of course not. SH_

_I always read your blogs immediately. SH_

John felt his eyes prickle. It wasn’t much, but it was a surprisingly sweet thing for Sherlock to say, Sherlock being Sherlock. John was searching for something to say in response, something a bit more articulate than _thanks mate_ , when Sherlock’s next text chimed in.

_The title you chose was wretched. SH_

Ah. Back to Sherlock being Sherlock then.

_Thanks mate._

_You always call our cases “adventures.” It makes them sound like children’s tales. SH_

_What would you call them, then?_

_Practical examples of the science of deduction. SH_

In his arm, Rosie finished with her bottle. John set the empty bottle to the side and Rosie made a little gurgling noise. Her eyes were already drooping to half-mast. John considered that the needs of infants, although many, were relatively straightforward, giving them a distinct advantage over the needs of adults.

_"The Practical Example of the Science of Deduction of the Weeping Widow.” Nope, doesn’t have the same ring to it._

John was sure that if there were a way to text a sigh, Sherlock would have done so.

_Which is why my title is called “The Case of the Arthritic Arsonist.” SH_

_Also, “Arthritic Arsonist” utilizes the literary device of alliteration. I’m compromising, John. SH_

John chuckled.

_No, you’re criticizing._

John set his mobile down for a moment and shifted Rosie against him, patting her back to burp her. He hoped that Sherlock didn’t think he was upset with him for his critiques. Sherlock always had plenty of rather direct opinions about John’s blog posts and John had long since grown immune to it. These days, he simply found them amusing.

Rosie burped and didn’t spit up and John found the whole ordeal a massive parental victory. He stood, scooping Rosie into one arm and his mobile in the other.

_Regardless, I think it’s a little too late to change the title._

_It’s never too late, John. SH_

John was smiling, doing his best to think of a witty comeback, when another text chimed in.

_For some things, that is. SH_

John frowned. He wasn’t particularly sure what _that_ meant. He placed Rosie back in her cot and her eyes blinked shut nearly immediately, her little fist coming to rest just at her mouth. Her legs gave another kick, but her effort was low.

_I don’t know. Whatever god-awful timing you’ve had, you seem to make it work out alright._

_That’s because I’m a genius. SH_

John could practically _see_ Sherlock smirking at his mobile, wherever he was. John tiptoed out of Rosie’s room and shut the door behind him as quietly as possible. He glanced down the hallway at the closed door of his and Mary’s bedroom. Now was the time to end the conversation, he knew. Now was the time to tell Sherlock goodnight and to slip back into his bed as gently as possible, so as not to wake Mary.

John found that he had absolutely no desire to do any of that. Instead, he went downstairs and sank onto the sofa.

_You at Baker Street?_

_Indeed. SH_

_And you’re at your flat, I take it. SH_

_Up late with the baby. SH_

John chose not to mention the fact that Rosie was now fast asleep and his sole reason for being awake at half-three was simply that he wasn’t yet done talking to Sherlock.

_Good deduction, that._

_And what’s your excuse for being up so late?_

_No excuse. SH_

_What are you up to, then?_

_Lying in bed. SH_

John felt his mouth go dry. He wasn’t quick enough to tell his imagination to mind its own business before an image of Sherlock flashed into his mind, sprawled out on his bed, curls flattened against the pillows. Sherlock slept in the nude sometimes, John knew. He felt his cock stir.

Nope.

_Don’t let me keep you up, then._

John pursed his lips. He wasn’t exactly ready to stop talking, but this seemed to be the safer of the choices at the moment.

_Can’t sleep. SH_

John felt a pang of relief shoot through him. For a moment, he considered with confusion his own reaction to their texts. His dopey smile, his elevated heart rate, the schoolgirlish way he stared at his mobile, waiting for Sherlock to respond. If John didn’t know any better, he would say they were flirting.

_Tried counting sheep?_

_Counting sheep has a paradoxical effect wherein the act of generating and tallying numbers stimulates the brain and staves off sleep. SH_

Well, _John_ was flirting. Sherlock was Sherlock.

But John wasn’t flirting, of course.

_Right. So no sheep, then?_

_No sheep. SH_

_Want me to come over and sing you a lullaby? Tuck you in?_

A bit of an overstep, that, but John meant it as a joke, really. He still wasn’t flirting. Sherlock’s response came instantaneously.

_Yes. SH_

John stared at his screen. His thumbs hovered over his mobile, frozen. The urge to text _I’ll be right over_ was surprisingly overpowering. His cock was certainly interested, although John refused to ask himself any questions as to what _that_ was about.

The dreams—the dreams of Sherlock, to be specific—were reaching a level John might call _incessant._ They weren’t all _those_ dreams; in fact, most of them weren’t. Some of them were the nightmare kind, the kind where Sherlock fell from the roof at Barts or was shot in the chest or stood in front of a flaming Appledore with half a dozen rifle sights trained on him and a lifeless Magnussen staring at them with dead eyes. Some of them were surprisingly normal, just John and Sherlock sitting together at Baker Street or sharing a cab or peering at a body in the morgue at Barts. Once John dreamed of Sherlock playing violin, a lovely piece John always remembered Sherlock playing while he thought. He woke up from that dream with a smile on his face and Mary asked him what he was so happy about. He told her he didn’t remember.

_You slept in my bed while I was away. SH_

John blinked. For a moment, he had no idea what Sherlock was on about. Then he remembered stumbling back to Baker Street the morning after Sherlock shot Magnussen, blearily falling into Sherlock’s bed and not moving until the afternoon, his dreams full of fire. A pang of shame lodged itself in his throat, as if he’d been caught doing something unseemly.

_Um. Yeah._

_Why? SH_

John felt his face grow warm. He wasn’t particularly sure how to explain the decision to Sherlock. He could barely explain it to himself.

_Sorry. I should have changed the sheets or something. Or gone up to my old room._

_I don’t mind. SH_

~ ~ ~

Sherlock ran his thumb across his mobile. Based on the speed of his responses, John had put Rosie back to bed—he typed faster with both hands and made fewer mistakes. Sherlock reasoned that John put Rosie back down several minutes ago but had not yet returned to bed with Mary; if he had, John would have said goodnight. Mary complained about the light from the mobile, so John rarely texted in bed. No, this meant that John chose not to go back to bed and didn’t seem like he would anytime soon. He had settled elsewhere in the flat—likely on the sofa, as it was the most comfortable.

Sherlock chose not to follow that line of reasoning any further.

He pictured John, lounging back on the sofa, head tucked against the cushions and legs sprawled out before him, eyes on his mobile, waiting for Sherlock to respond. It would be dark in his flat—John didn’t need lights on to see the screen. John would feel safe in the darkness, the disinhibition of being unseen.

Sherlock wondered what John was wearing. Pyjamas, likely—loose fitting cotton trousers and a plain vest. He thought about asking John to confirm—these things are impossible to deduce over text—but thought better of it. For his part, Sherlock wondered if he ought to put some trousers on. Some pants, at least. Texting John in this state seemed a questionable idea at best. Sherlock made no movement towards his clothes. His free hand ran across his stomach, fingertips drifting across cool skin. He tapped another message into his mobile.

~ ~ ~

_My sheets smelled like you. SH_

John’s heart thudded and he felt it all the way down in his groin. Something about the idea of Sherlock sleeping in a bed that smelled like him made it difficult to breathe. And yet, John couldn’t think of a single thing to say aside from—

_Sorry._

_I said I don’t mind, John. SH_

John adjusted himself in his pyjamas. His cock reminded him that lengthier touches were preferred, but John ignored the suggestion. As a precaution, he brought his free hand up to his hair.

_Well then. I’ll have to come by from time to time and mess the sheets up for you._

_Please do. SH_

_You’re always welcome, John. SH_

John considered that it made absolutely no sense for his mouth to start watering at that. His fingers tightened in his hair.

Tonight’s dream started out normal. John was puttering about the kitchen in Baker Street, preparing to make tea. Sherlock was sitting at the kitchen table, doing something or other at his microscope. It all felt very right, just as it should be. Then Sherlock stood up from the table and there was a shift in the air, a sort of stillness that happens just before a storm, right when you can tell something catastrophic is coming.

_If I’d have known, I could have gotten in your bed after we chased that arsonist through the whole of Richmond Park. The one we found out later did marathons. Particularly ripe after that one._

Best to keep it light, John reasoned. His cock disagreed. He told his cock to shut up.

_If only. SH_

_Your sheets would’ve smelled like me for weeks after that. Not sure it’d be a good thing, though._

Mary always had more than a few things to say about John’s post-case odor. He had taken to getting into the shower immediately after returning home just to avoid the eyebrow-raises and little comments. Not that he blamed her—his work with Sherlock had him in some disgusting places more often than not, and breaking a sweat seemed mandatory.

_I don’t mind how you smell. SH_

In the dream, Sherlock had stood up and moved just behind John. He didn’t say anything, didn’t try to get past John or move him out of the way, just stood there. John wondered if Sherlock needed to get something out of the drawer just in front of him, or perhaps off the counter. John considered that he ought to step to the side and allow Sherlock to reach whatever it was he needed. John didn’t move. He simply stood there, eyes fixed on the electric kettle in front of him. He noticed that his heart rate increased. Sherlock placed a hand on either side of him on the counter, pinning him in.

 _Ta, I suppose_.

_I don’t mind how you smell either._

John considered that this was an unusual conversation to have with a mate, one that he couldn’t recall having with any of his friends in the past. Still, he found himself rapt in the conversation, and there was a part of him—a rather insistent part of him—that was _very_ interested.

_Of course you don’t. SH_

_I smell lovely. SH_

John laughed and immediately clapped a hand over his mouth, the sound echoing through the flat and sure to wake somebody. Of course Sherlock Holmes would be an arrogant prick about the way he smelled. Still, John begrudgingly had to admit that he was right—Sherlock usually smelled bloody fantastic. It was those soaps in the fancy bottles John remembered seeing in their shower, the posh aftershave that John couldn’t even imagine affording, the expensive hair product that Sherlock swore he didn’t use. Sherlock wasn’t even in the room and yet John could conjure up a memory of his smell. _God_ he smelled good. It was bloody unfair.

John’s hand dropped from his hair.

In the dream, Sherlock wasn’t touching him, simply standing behind him with arms braced on either side, trapping him against the counter. Still, the very presence of Sherlock behind him, the hint of his body heat warming John’s back, was exhilarating in a way John couldn’t quite understand. John could feel himself starting to grow hard. He dug his fingernails into the wood of the counter. He considered that he ought to ask Sherlock what he wanted, or at the very least ask him to move. John remained silent.

_You don’t smell lovely all the time, you know._

_Not when there isn’t a case on and you haven’t showered in days._

_Not very lovely then._

_But you agree that the rest of the time I smell lovely. SH_

~ ~ ~

The smell of John had long since left Sherlock’s sheets but he could still remember it, the scent of his shampoo and cologne and sweat and _John_ ness. Sherlock considered how the brain processes olfactory memories differently than other memories. Regular memories—the stories one remembers about one’s first day of school and what an isosceles triangle is and how to get to the bloody Tesco—they all get stored in the hippocampus, the space in the brain meant to hold memories. Olfactory memories—the associations one has with smells, smells of rain and formaldehyde and cigarette smoke and a very particular brand of cheap cologne—they get stored in the amygdala, the space in the brain responsible for emotion. As such, these memories came wrapped in sentiment, with a bow of pain. Sherlock figured this was the reason why when he collapsed into his bed and smelled John on his sheets he felt as if his throat were being ripped out. He figured this was also the reason why just the memory of John’s scent was making his pulse quicken, his breathing stutter, his skin tingle. His cock harden.

Sherlock knew that the whole of this was a bad idea, the equivalent of taking a shot of whiskey to stave off the pain of an amputation. It helped nothing and only hurt in the long run. It wouldn’t make Sherlock want to use his legs again, wouldn’t help him take on cases, wouldn’t do a damn thing for the constant ache in his chest. He pictured John, reclined on his sofa and smiling at his mobile while they texted, and didn’t care.

Sherlock allowed a finger to trace down his stomach, down the line of dark hair trailing just underneath his navel. This was ill-advised, surely, but it was dark and Sherlock was alone and nobody would see.

~ ~ ~

_Fine. I’ll admit that you smell surprisingly nice._

Another unusual thing to say to a mate, but John didn’t much care at the moment. His fingers fiddled with the drawstring on his pyjama pants, looking for something to do other than what they desperately wanted to do.

In the dream, Sherlock had stepped forward. Just a step, no more than that, but it pressed him flush against John’s back and John let out a moan that quite frankly surprised the hell out of him. Sherlock was _hard_ , rock hard in his trousers and John was hard too at that point, his cock straining against his flies and the wood of the drawer just in front of him. Sherlock didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t even seem to breathe any differently, for Christ’s sake. He just stood there, flush against John’s back and hard as a rock and John couldn’t remember being so turned on in the entirety of his life.

_What are you doing awake so late, John? SH_

The question was just enough to startle John out of his memory. He wrapped one of the drawstrings around his finger, tight enough to hurt.

_Rosie. Remember?_

_You put Rosie back down ages ago. SH_

_You ordinarily would have gone right back to bed after you put her down. And yet you’re still awake. SH_

John chewed on his lip. Of course Sherlock would be able to deduce all of that over bloody text.

_I suppose you’re right._

_Why are you still awake? SH_

_Guess I’m not tired anymore._

It wasn’t a lie. John was wide awake at the moment, although some parts of him were more awake than others.

_As a father to a three-month-old child I would wager you are getting no more than two consecutive hours of sleep at a time and a maximum of five hours of sleep a night. Liberal estimates, by the way. You are always tired. SH_

_Becoming an expert on parenting, are we?_

_It’s statistics, John. SH_

_Against all probability, something has you awake. SH_

_What is it? SH_

John’s fingers continued fiddling with the drawstring on his pyjamas. His knuckles brushed up against his cock with each movement of his fingers. His body was warm, buzzing.

In the dream, Sherlock still didn’t move. His body was pressed against John’s with a strength John didn’t fully understand, trapping him against the counter. John wriggled slightly, trying to turn himself around, but Sherlock held him tight. John’s cock ached in his trousers, and the angle was uncomfortable, bunched up in the fabric. John shifted against the drawer, doing his best to adjust himself. The hard wood of the drawer wasn’t exactly comfortable, but at this point any type of friction felt incredible and Sherlock wasn’t moving. John couldn’t help himself. He started moving slightly, making little thrusts with his hips, his cock grinding against the drawer and his arse grinding against Sherlock’s erection. John gasped, tilting forward, his palms flat on the counter in front of him. He could see Sherlock’s hands on either side of him, calmly keeping him in place, and wanted those hands on him so badly he could barely see straight. He moved himself harder against Sherlock, feeling Sherlock’s cock slide up the cleft of his arse through his trousers. He swore he could feel Sherlock’s cock twitch against him and let out a small whimper. Sherlock didn’t make a sound.

_Talking to you, I suppose._

~ ~ ~

Sherlock smiled at his mobile with half-closed eyes. He had long since pushed the blankets off himself, and the cool air felt lovely on his skin.

He ran a slow finger up the length of his erection, his breath catching in his throat. A bead of pre-ejaculate formed at the tip of his cock and he swirled his thumb around the moisture. His body shuddered at the sensation. He thought of John.

~ ~ ~

_I do hope I am not keeping you up, John. SH_

John found himself a touch preoccupied by the word _up,_ but that was likely because it felt as if the entirety of his groin was throbbing. He was sure Sherlock didn’t mean it like that. Sherlock didn’t know how John was practically squirming in his seat, the front of his pyjamas tented, the heat from his erection emanating through the thin fabric and warming his hand.

John’s brain was starting to short out, sending him non-starter ideas like _tell him just how_ up _he’s keeping you at the moment_ and _ask him what he’s wearing_ and _touch yourself dear god just touch yourself_. It was getting hard to focus.

_You aren’t._

_I like this._

John permitted one finger—just the one finger—to trace the outline of his cock through his pyjamas. He blew out a shuddering exhale. It wasn’t enough by far.

_I like this too. SH_

In the dream, John couldn’t stand it anymore. His cock was starting to ache from the harsh surface of the wood in front of him and Sherlock’s hard, motionless cock pressing against him was driving him mad. He tilted back, pressing the whole of his body flush against Sherlock’s. John’s heart was pounding so loudly the sound seemed to be echoing through the room and Sherlock’s pulse didn’t even seem to be elevated. He craned his head backwards, trying his best to reach Sherlock’s lips. The angle was too awkward, and Sherlock wasn’t moving. _God, Sherlock,_ John said, his voice a breathy whine. _Please. Please fuck me._ He had never heard himself sound so desperate before. He wondered if he ought to be embarrassed by it, except that he _was_ desperate, practically gagging for it. Sherlock hadn’t moved, had barely even touched him, and John would have let Sherlock do anything to him—unspeakable things, nameless things, _any_ thing Sherlock wanted. John writhed against his body, bowing backwards, trying like hell to catch Sherlock’s lips with his own. God he needed this. _Please,_ John whispered. _Please._

That was around when he woke up.

The dream left him with an overpowering sense of unfulfilled arousal and talking to Sherlock was only making it worse and John was done pretending like he wasn’t going to touch himself tonight. His hand was in his pyjamas and wrapped around his cock, wanking himself in long strokes. He kept his other hand on his mobile, feeling for the vibrations. Something about knowing Sherlock was on the other end—awake at Baker Street, lying in bed and texting him—made the whole of John’s body throb. He let out a little moan and quickly bit his lips closed.

Fuck. He needed to go somewhere else if he was going to do this. This wasn’t exactly something he wanted to explain to Mary if she came down the stairs. With effort, he removed his hand from his cock and lifted himself off the sofa. Christ, he was so hard it was a challenge to walk, the fabric of his trousers sliding against his erection with each step. He staggered towards the downstairs bathroom and shut the door firmly behind him.

~ ~ ~

The bottle of lubricant lay on the bed next to Sherlock, forgotten nearly immediately after being put to use. Sherlock’s mobile rested on his chest; he would feel the vibration when John responded. Sherlock ran a slick hand up the length of himself, his eyes sliding shut. He pictured John hovered over him, looking down at him with wanting eyes, his hand closing around Sherlock’s cock.

Sherlock didn’t know how John would touch him, but seeing as John was never going to actually touch him Sherlock felt it acceptable to take some liberties in his imagination. He thought of how John touched himself that night, wailing and shaking as Sherlock fucked him, his hand urgent and violent. No, John wouldn’t start off touching him like that, Sherlock figured. He would start slow, deliberate, which was how Sherlock touched himself now—long strokes from the base of his cock to the tip, firm yet teasing. His feet skittered against the mattress. His hips twitched, moving upwards into his hand—John’s hand.

~ ~ ~

_Careful, or I’m going to start expecting texts at half-three every morning._

John set his mobile on the counter near the sink and had his pyjama bottoms at his ankles in seconds, moaning out as his hand wrapped around his cock. He tipped forward, bracing himself against the counter with his free hand as he stroked himself, eyes sliding shut. Images from his dream drifted back to him, except this time Sherlock had moved. In his mind, Sherlock wrapped his arms around John—one hand pressed against his chest, pulling John into his body, the other hand closing around his cock. Firm. Commanding. John bit at his lips, his head falling forward. God that felt good. That felt so good.

John released himself just long enough to run his tongue over his palm. He imagined Sherlock doing the same, pressing his palm to that gorgeous mouth of his, slicking his hand with spit before bringing it back to John’s cock. John heard himself make a desperate noise and tightened his grip on himself. He could practically feel Sherlock, still standing behind him, stroking him faster, harder. _Christ._

_Careful, or I’m going to start sending them. SH_

~ ~ ~

Sherlock gasped into the nothingness as his fist moved faster over his cock. His back arched and he lifted his hips off the mattress, picturing John bent over him, on top of him. John’s hands on him. His mouth. God, his mouth. He could envision John crouching between his legs, fingers grasping his hips as he took Sherlock’s cock deep into his throat. He could almost feel John’s tongue move against him. Sherlock heard himself make a noise that was part-moan, part-whine, a noise wholly unfamiliar to him. His head tipped towards the headboard. His body shook. Not enough. It wasn’t enough.

~ ~ ~

It wasn’t enough. Dear Christ, it wasn’t enough. John could remember the feel of Sherlock’s erection pressing against his arse in his dream and felt something ache in the very core of himself. God, he wanted Sherlock inside him so badly. He needed the feel of Sherlock filling him up, slamming into him with all he had, fucking him so hard his world faded into white noise. John could barely breathe from the weight of it. He tapped out another text to Sherlock—

_You’re a bad influence._

—before bringing his fingers into his mouth.

~ ~ ~

Sherlock could feel the first hints of an orgasm building and slowed the pace of his hand on himself. If it were John, if John were here, Sherlock knew that he could come from John’s hands on him, his mouth on him, but he wouldn’t want to. He needed to be inside John, needed to feel the hot center of John’s body tight around his cock. Sherlock imagined John’s voice from that night ( _god yes god Sherlock please fuck me_ ) and wanted so badly to fuck him, needed to fuck him. He needed to come making John scream.

Not like this—he wouldn’t have John like this, Sherlock on his back and John above him. Sherlock rolled himself onto his stomach. This was how he wanted John, writhing underneath him, his arse pressed against Sherlock’s groin as Sherlock fucked him into the mattress.

~ ~ ~

_Everyone needs a little devil on their shoulder to keep things interesting. SH_

John certainly felt like Sherlock was more than a little devil at the moment.

John felt his spit-slick fingers graze his hole and let out a gasp, his hand momentarily pausing on his cock. He spread his legs, leaning forward slightly against the counter, giving the arm reaching behind him better access to the part of him currently aching for touch. The tip of his finger slid inside and John cursed. He was starting to sweat, a thin layer of perspiration forming over his forehead. He worked a finger inside, trying to stifle his moans. There was not as much lube as he wanted by half, but it was enough and John could make it work. He needed to feel something inside him, needed to feel Sherlock inside him. John was nearly breathless by the time he was buried to the knuckle in his arse. He gave his cock a slow stroke and felt himself tense around his finger. He imagined the sound Sherlock would make at that, feeling John’s arse clench around his cock. John would have given quite a lot to find out at the moment. His hand started moving on his cock once more.

~ ~ ~

Sherlock made himself go slowly—he would start slowly, with John. He would ease into him, wait until he was open and relaxed and panting beneath him. He would slide himself in and out of John with care, moving as if the two of them had all the time in the world, waiting until John was begging him for it.

Sherlock propped himself on an elbow and wrapped his fist as tightly as he could around his cock. It wasn’t as tight as John—he couldn’t make it as tight as John—but it would have to suffice. Slowly, he shifted his hips forward, sliding his cock into his fist at an agonizing pace. His body shook and his breath caught in his throat. He clenched his hand around himself, squeezing his cock within an inch of its life. He made a little whimpering noise.

“God,” he gasped, “John.”

He started moving his hips faster.

~ ~ ~

John’s finger moved inside of him and it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t big enough, it wasn’t long enough, it wasn’t deep enough, it wasn’t _Sherlock_ enough. He worked another finger into himself, his mouth dropping open at the added stretch. It was closer, this, but still not enough. He slid his fingers in and out of his arse, setting a slow pace, wishing to Christ he could feel the sturdy warmth of Sherlock’s body against him. Groin slapping against John’s arse. Fingers digging into John’s hips. John shifted the angle of his fingers slightly, trying to push deeper. He cursed, whimpered. He needed this so badly right now.

“Fuck,” John breathed, “Sherlock.”

~ ~ ~

Sherlock could hear John’s voice in his head, telling him _faster_ , telling him _harder,_ telling him _there, Sherlock, that_. Sherlock couldn’t go slow anymore, couldn’t control himself. He started pumping his hips, thrusting his cock into his fist with urgency. His head tipped forward, his curls, soaked with sweat, drooping against the mattress. He was sucking in air faster than his body could process it. Things were growing dizzy. He pictured John beneath him, panting and wailing, his arse taking Sherlock’s cock greedily. Sherlock bit at his own forearm, wishing it was John’s back, his shoulder, his neck. He needed his mouth on John, wherever he could reach. Sherlock moaned. His thrusts quickened.

~ ~ ~

John’s fingers pistoned in and out of his arse. His hand pumped over his cock. He wasn’t being quiet anymore, not by a long shot. He ought to care. He didn’t care. He needed this—Christ, how he needed this. He couldn’t get the angle of his fingers quite right. It wasn’t quite right, still wasn’t enough, still wasn’t Sherlock. He made a frustrated noise, shoving his fingers into himself harder, faster. He couldn’t hold himself upright anymore and collapsed against the sink, his chest pressed against the counter, face plastered to the cool tile, arse jutting into the air. He pictured Sherlock’s hands on him, running along the slick sweat of his back, scratching at him, grasping at his shoulders as he pounded into John harder, faster, more.

“More, Sherlock,” John gasped. “Christ. I need more.”

~ ~ ~

“ _Fuck. John._ ”

Sherlock thrashed on the bed, his hips pumping furiously into his fist. His arm was shaking. The whole of his body was rigid, tense, balancing on the edge. He had bit his arm so hard he could see a red ring of tooth marks standing out against his skin. He could feel his orgasm building again, growing nearer with each breath, each frantic thrust of his hips. He pictured John shaking beneath him, grinding his cock into the mattress with abandon, his arse swelling and clenching around Sherlock’s cock as his own orgasm overtook him. Sherlock couldn’t hold on, couldn’t hold on. God, _John._

~ ~ ~

John twisted his fingers and angled them just so and brushed against his prostate and had to shove his face against the tile of the counter to keep his shouts from waking up the whole bloody street. He pumped his fingers into himself, his body lighting up, sparking, ready to ignite. Sherlock’s name was in his mouth, on his lips, leaving him with every sharp pant of breath pushed out of him while he fucked himself with abandon. His hand flew over his cock and he moved his arse back against his own fingers, quickening the pace. His whole body was shaking and everything was closing in, open, raw, needing just a little more, a little more.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck.

_Sherlock._

~ ~ ~

Sherlock’s orgasm took him by surprise and for a moment he swore he blacked out, fucking his fist senselessly and shouting into the mattress. He came hard into his hand, hot streams of semen spilling into his fist, between his fingers, onto his sheets. It was John he pictured, coming hard into John’s arse, filling him up. He pictured the look of John after, wrecked and open, a stream of Sherlock’s come trickling out of him. The whole of Sherlock’s body shuddered. He might die from this, he thought. It would be a lovely way to go.

~ ~ ~

John’s arse clenched around his fingers and his cock swelled in his hand and he was there, barely able to contain the sounds he made as his body shook and pulsed and shorted out. He came in long arches, spurting all over the cabinets in front of him, dripping onto the floor. The counter was soaked with his sweat and he was drooling a bit and he could have sworn there were tears stinging his eyes. He gasped and it sounded suspiciously like a sob. His body was twitching and his cock felt raw and oversensitized and he whined, actually _whined_ , as he eased his fingers out of himself. His eyes were still stinging and his face seemed wetter than it ought to be and his breathing wasn’t quite returning to normal.

~ ~ ~

Sherlock collapsed against the mattress, forehead pressed against his arm. He was lying in his own come, but he didn’t care. He tried to steady his breathing with gulping gasps. The air of the room was cold on his slick skin. Goosepimples arose on his body and he shuddered once more. His breathing slowly stilled, body returning to homeostasis, and the flat fell back into a silence that only served to highlight the lack of life that surrounded Sherlock at the moment. He heaved out another breath just to fill the room with a sound.

Reality slid back in around him, the weight of everything he felt, everything he had done sitting on his back with a bone-crushing strength. Sherlock was aware that he was, once again, lying in his bed alone. John was elsewhere, in his flat that he shared with Mary and Rosie, very likely dropping off to sleep. Sherlock unwound his fingers from his cock, wiping them on the sheets. He gasped and it sounded suspiciously like a sob.

~ ~ ~

John was unsure if he was still recovering from an orgasm or having a panic attack, but it somehow felt like both. His heart was hammering and his body was sick and shuddering and the tile beneath his eyes was soaked. His brain had several urgent questions for him but lacked the functioning capacity to ask them all properly so they were coming out in broken chunks. _What was… Why… How… Did you… Why did you… To Sherlock..._

John made a growling noise. He dug his forehead into the counter, not yet ready to stand up and face himself in the mirror. He pounded his fist into the tile. Once. Twice. He sucked in a sharp breath.

“ _Fuck,_ ” he hissed.

~ ~ ~

After a time, Sherlock forced himself to move, or at least roll off of the rapidly-cooling semen trapped beneath him. He pulled a blanket over his shivering body, wondering if sleep would decide to visit him tonight. He would manage the sheets tomorrow, hopefully before Mrs. Hudson got to them; he couldn’t be bothered with washing them and decided he would just bin them. Start fresh.

Sherlock rolled to his side and retrieved his mobile from where it got tangled under the blankets. He looked at the last message he typed out. He blessedly hadn’t pressed _send._

_I am desperately in love with you and I am certain it’s killing me. SH_

Sherlock stared at the little letters blinking back at him from his mobile. He smiled at them. He deleted them. He placed his mobile on the nightstand and buried his face into the pillow that hadn’t smelled like John for months.

“Fuck,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hearts forever and ever,
> 
> Arwa
> 
> (and of course: https://arwamachine.tumblr.com/)


	8. Beat Out the Dustman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You know," John said. "I think the last time I had more than a few pints in a row was my stag night."
> 
> Lestrade laughed. "Fair enough," he said. "Just don't expect me to put out." He winked.
> 
> "What?" John asked.

“Glad we could do this,” John said to Lestrade, his voice raised over the din of the pub. “Feels like I haven’t been out of the flat in ages.”

Lestrade raised his glass in a cheers. “No worries, mate. I remember what those early months are like. Feels like your whole life revolves around some needy, whining, helpless mess.” He took a pull of his pint and chuckled. “Course. You’re probably used to that with Sherlock.”

John forced himself to laugh. “Yeah,” he said. In truth, he hadn’t seen very much of Sherlock as of late. As far as he knew, Sherlock still wasn’t taking on many cases and spent much of his time at Baker Street, in what Mrs. Hudson referred to as the _queen bitch of piss-poor moods_. However, it wasn’t exactly Sherlock’s mood that had John reasoning it was best he stayed away from Sherlock for a bit.

This, however, meant that John’s social interactions consisted nearly entirely of time spent with Rosie. He could feel his social skills dropping away in large chunks. He reasoned that in a few more weeks he would revert to babbling and screaming as his sole means of communication. As such, when Lestrade asked if he wanted to grab a pint, John agreed immediately.

“And how is the baby?” Lestrade asked. “Meaning Rosie, of course.”

“Of course,” John said. “She’s wonderful. Not exactly sleeping through the night, but…”

“She’ll get there,” Lestrade said. “Those first few months, it feels like they’ll never get there. But it’ll go faster than you think.”

“Yeah,” John said. In truth, it was already going faster than he thought. She could roll over onto her tummy and push herself onto her elbows. Moving towards crawling, John knew. She babbled incessantly and _smiled._ The smiling was John’s favorite. The smiling made being woken up at all hours of the night by the sound of screaming somehow acceptable; John was suddenly _happy_ to be awake at three in the morning changing her nappies as soon as she smiled at him. John remembered feeling a similar way about Sherlock; no matter what sort of hell the man put John through—and Sherlock always seemed keen to discover inventive new iterations of hell—all Sherlock needed to do was to smile or wink or crack a joke and everything was forgiven.

John missed Sherlock with an intensity he didn’t fully understand. He took a long pull of his pint. A very long pull.

“Sherlock taking on any cases?” John forced himself to ask. He could not, however, force himself to make eye contact with Lestrade when he asked it, so the question was largely directed at his half-empty pint.

Lestrade frowned. “I managed to convince him to take on one or two. I tried to bring him some easy ones. Ones he could solve from the flat. You know, increase his confidence or what-have-you. He saw right through that, of course.”

John chuckled. “Of course.” Sherlock could always tell when someone was doing something for his own good. He hated it. John wondered if Sherlock could tell that was what was happening now, with him and John.

The truth was, if Sherlock was someone John was going to have a wank to, the two of them probably shouldn’t spend time together. That was the long and short of it. John couldn’t help but feel that if he was split open he would be filled entirely with sick-colored guilt. The morning after that first wank, it was hard for him to even look Mary in the eye. He tried to tell himself that he hadn’t done anything physically wrong, hadn’t stepped outside of the boundaries of his marriage in any literal way, but even he knew that wasn’t quite true at this point. John felt very much as if he was having an affair—an affair in which no physical contact had ever been initiated and in which the other party had no idea they were a participant, but an affair nonetheless. He was rather disgusted with himself at the moment.

The time apart was also for Sherlock’s sake, John told himself. It wasn’t fair for Sherlock, having a mate who constantly needed to adjust an erection whenever he was around. John still remained uncertain as to whatever the hell Sherlock’s sexual preferences were (or if they even existed), but he was unquestionably certain that whatever they were, they did not involve John. Sherlock made that bit clear ages ago. As such, John figured it was best that he keep his distance from Sherlock until he got whatever the hell this was sorted. He hoped it wouldn’t take very long.

The dreams weren’t helping.

“Have you seen him recently?” Lestrade asked.

John took another long pull of his pint. “No,” he said against his glass. “You?”

“I was by last week,” Lestrade said. “He’s still in that mood of his. Not sure what that’s all about.”

John shrugged. The mood had been going strong since Sherlock’s brief exile. John accepted that being worried about Sherlock was to be his natural state at the moment.

“He was out of bed, at least,” Lestrade said. “Showered. Seemed like an improvement.”

John nodded. “Did it look like he’d eaten?” he asked his pint glass.

“Who knows?” Lestrade said. “He’s lost weight.”

John felt his mouth twist to the side. He tapped at his glass. He should stop by Baker Street, he knew. He could push aside whatever was going on in his brain for long enough to feed Sherlock up, make sure he wasn’t dying.

The dreams were fairly constant. The ratio of normal dreams to nightmares to _those_ dreams had tipped unfavorably in the direction of _those_ dreams, which were starting to seem a bit like nightmares at this point. Sometimes they were the odd ones where Sherlock did nothing except stand near him and his mere presence got John so turned on that soon he was begging Sherlock to touch him. Other times they were the ones where Sherlock _was_ touching him—hands everywhere, mouth everywhere, on top of John, underneath him, inside him. After that one night where he and Sherlock texted, John promised himself that he was absolutely, undoubtedly, categorically _not_ going to have a wank to Sherlock again. He had already broken that promise three times, and that number represented considerable restraint.

“You two...” Lestrade asked, “alright? You and Sherlock, that is?”

“Yeah,” John said, forcing himself to make eye contact with Lestrade. “Yeah. Yeah, we’re good.” He knew it was one too many _yeahs_ , but it was the truth, at least part of it. As far as he knew, his relationship with Sherlock was fine. It was John who was going a bit wonky, who needed to take a moment to get his head right. If not, it would be more than just his relationship with Sherlock that might suffer.

“Good,” Lestrade said, choosing to ignore the one too many _yeahs_ in John’s response in favor of superficial conversation. John was grateful; Sherlock would never have let that go. “Anyway. How’s the missus?”

“Good,” John said, considering the change in topic to be a lateral move. He realized that he was not particularly sure of the answer to that question anymore. His guilt over whatever was going on in his head—the dreams, the secret nighttime wanks in the bathroom—had him moving delicately around Mary, keeping things as light and short as possible. He was certain that, if given the time to really scrutinize him, Mary would detect his guilt in seconds. She did, after all, have a skillset about which John knew very little. He didn’t like to think about what a former assassin might do if she learned that her husband was having wanks to fantasies of his best mate.

Oddly, avoiding Mary had been easy these past few weeks. Mary was out of the house more as of late, leaving John with Rosie for longer and longer stretches of time. At first, she told John where she would be—at some book club John didn’t know she was a part of, out for drinks with her friends—but eventually skipped this step altogether and simply left, breezing past him and telling him that she would be back later. She arrived back to their flat looking tense and distracted. A little part of John’s brain noticed and occasionally gave him a poke, suggesting that it might be a good idea to ask her a question or two about her recent goings-on. However, a larger part of John’s brain would then remind him that asking Mary questions about her goings-on might lead to questions about _his_ goings-on, specifically the goings-on that occurred in their bathroom at half-three in the morning, and John was not interested in answering any of these questions.

“She’s good,” John repeated. “She’s tired, of course. Lack of sleep and all.”

“Of course,” Lestrade said. “New mum territory. It’ll all sort itself out.”

“Of course,” John said.

Lestrade cleared his throat, stared into the dregs of his pint. “Listen,” he said. “It’s a good thing you and the missus got things all patched up. What with the baby and all.”

John finished his pint in a heavy gulp. “Yep,” he said.

“I know it's not my place,” Lestrade said. “And we certainly don’t have to talk about it. But I know the two of you were—you know—for a while.”

The barkeep gestured at the two of them to ask if they wanted another round. John nodded emphatically.

“I’m just saying, mate,” Lestrade said. “I’ve been there. You know. With my old lady. I know how it is.”

John narrowed his eyes. Something in him doubted that Lestrade had been in a situation wherein he discovered that his wife had a secret past as an assassin and shot his best mate in the chest for finding her out, but he decided to have a listen anyway.

“We had a rough go of it too,” Lestrade was saying. “But we did our best to keep it together for the kids. I think it was the right thing to do, you know. So the kids had both parents around.”

The barkeep brought over their drinks and John downed nearly a third of his pint immediately. He considered whether he ought to explain to Lestrade that his situation with Mary was a bit more complicated than her cheating on him with a P.E. teacher. His situation with Mary, it took a bit more time to wrap one’s head around.

If John was being honest with himself—and he was finding that his first pint had made him particularly honest with himself—things hadn’t been the same since he’d gone back to Mary. It felt like living with a stranger, which John figured was an accurate way of looking at the situation. He barely knew anything about the woman, and the things he thought he knew were all called into question. Did she truly enjoy Earl Grey tea? Had she actually visited Spain on holiday when she was a child? Was her favorite color really red? How much of the person he knew was actually Mary (or whatever her name truly was) and how much was just a cover? Empty vaults?

If John was being even more honest with himself—and he was finding that this second pint was only increasing his levels of honesty—he found that he didn’t much care. He didn’t care what Mary’s favorite color was or what kind of tea she fancied or where she had traveled in her life. He didn’t like the lies, but he didn’t like them on principle, the way he could dislike some dictator in a country he’d barely heard of without letting it ruin his day. He ought to be upset, he knew. He ought to be raging and infuriated and yelling at her nonstop, because to be upset with her meant that he _felt_ something, that he had feelings for her that could be hurt. What he found himself feeling at the moment seemed to be a large batch of nothing.

So fine—she could be a secret assassin who lied to him constantly. She could saunter out of the house at all hours, not telling him where she was going or when she’d return. She could wear a face that was clearly worried about something and tell him nothing about it. She could leave him to care for their child during the entirety of it as she slipped away millimeters at a time. Fine. It was no bother to John.

It reminded John a bit of how he felt about practicing medicine.

Working at the surgery could be mind-numbing at times. It was the same five to seven presenting issues, day in and day out, attached to a revolving door of unremarkable people. It was barely a valid use of his medical degree. Everything that occurred throughout his day was forgotten the second he left the building, sometimes sooner. He once introduced himself to the same patient three times before being reminded that he actually treated the bloke several times before. When one of his patients passed away from old age or cancer or a car accident or what have you, he gave his condolences and shrugged it off. It was a job. He felt nothing about it, but he wouldn’t have thought he ought to. He wouldn’t have even known he was bored if it weren’t for the army.

Practicing medicine in the army—in an active war zone—was a whole different animal. It was dangerous, yes, but it was exhilarating _._ There were times when John screamed from frustration or punched a wall or drank himself blind but he had never felt more alive. When he was in the thick of it, when it was _think fast or be killed_ , his blood was pumping and his brain was firing on all cylinders and he was the one calm thing in the midst of chaos and he _loved_ it. He felt as if he was the best version of himself, that he and the war were oddly perfect for each other, offering up exactly what the other needed. The bullet that took John away from all that was heartbreaking. Medicine never felt quite as wonderful afterwards.

Funny, John thought, how he never would have known that what he felt wasn’t quite right if he didn’t know what he _could_ be feeling.

Lestrade was still talking about something, some couples retreat that he and his missus went on that _really spiced things up if you know what I’m saying_ , but John was focused on the lump that seemed to be forming in his throat. Because John, of course, had no intention of changing any of it.

 _You’re very loyal, very quickly,_ Mycroft Holmes once said to him, and John supposed he was. He didn’t throw his lot in with many things, but those he chose he tended to choose for life. He would never have left the army on his own accord. He would have stayed until a bullet ripped through his head; he very nearly did. He would never quit medicine, he knew. He would be _Doctor Watson_ until they put him in the ground. And Mary, well, he wasn’t planning on going anywhere. He actually _did_ choose her for life—he had witnesses. He stood in front of a church full of people and swore to God that he would stay at her side—love, honor, cherish, obey—’till death did them part. John took his oaths seriously, no matter the cost.

Lestrade’s brow furrowed. “You okay, mate?”

John cleared his throat, wrenched his mind back to reality. “Yeah,” he said, taking another swig of his pint. “Yeah. Just…” he raised his glass, now half-empty, “the booze getting to me, I suppose. Now that the baby’s here, my tolerance is shit.”

Lestrade laughed, relieved. “That sounds about right,” he said.

“You know,” John said. “I think the last time I had more than a few pints in a row was my stag night.”

Lestrade’s laugh boomed through the pub. A bit much, John thought.

“Fair enough,” Lestrade said. “Just don’t expect me to put out.” He winked.

“What?” John asked, his lips lifting in response to what he assumed was a joke he didn’t quite get.

“Oh,” Lestrade said, looking down into his beer. “Sorry mate. I hope it’s not a sore subject.”

“What is?” John asked.

“You know,” Lestrade said, gesturing vaguely.

“No,” John said. He quirked his head to the side. “I don’t know.”

“You and Sherlock,” Lestrade said, a smile still plastered to his face, looking as if John was just putting him on about this whole _not knowing_ business. “That night.”

John stared at him. He blinked.

Lestrade’s smile faded. “Sorry, mate,” he said. “That was a bit of an overstep. It’s just...you and Sherlock seemed so normal after—well, normal for the two of you—and then the wedding was still on, so I just figured you two had sorted out what happened…”

“What do you mean _what happened?_ ” John asked. “What happened?”

Lestrade laughed, a desperate, _please don’t make me say it out loud_ sound. “C’mon, mate.”

John raised his palms at his sides. _I really don’t know._ “We got arrested?” he tried.

“Well, yeah,” Lestrade said. “But I’m more referring to what you got arrested _for._ ”

“Sherlock got us into a fight,” John said. Then he realized that was the story he made up, the ending he tacked onto a tale that he didn’t quite remember. The truth was, he didn’t know why he and Sherlock got arrested. His brow furrowed. “Right?”

Lestrade shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “Certainly sounds like Sherlock. But that’s not exactly what I’m talking about.”

John could feel the furniture start to move in his mind. He _didn’t_ know why he and Sherlock got arrested. Come to think about it, he didn’t know very much about what happened that night at all. “We…” he started, not knowing how the sentence was to end.

“You shagged,” Lestrade said.

John felt as if all the pints he’d ever drank hit him at once. Everything spun. His mouth fell open, but the whole of the English language was gone from his brain.

“But,” Lestrade said, “you knew that.” His tone was pleading. _Please, mate. Please tell me you knew that._

“We...” John started. So far, it was the only word he could remember.

“Oh Christ,” Lestrade said, a hand flying to his forehead. “Did you not know that?”

“We…” John said again. It being the only word he knew and all, he might as well get good use out of it.

“Did you not remember?” Lestrade asked. “How could you not remember?” His eyes were wide. He looked as if he wished to crawl under a table.

John mouthed the word _we._ He considered that he might be having a panic attack in slow-motion.

“Were you two really that gone?” Lestrade was asking. His questions didn’t seem to be directed entirely at John. “God,” he said. “You must’ve been. Sherlock was nearly incoherent once the two of you got to the station. You were practically unconscious. Oh Christ…”

John’s mouth moved. It didn’t make much sense to keep repeating the same word over and over, but he couldn’t think of another. His brain was sputtering. There was an image of a brick wall that kept flashing into his mind. Someone making a sound—a loud sound.

“Oh god, it all makes sense now.” Lestrade’s hands were in his hair. He looked like he did the day Sherlock accidentally caused two bodies at a crime scene to explode. “The wedding still being on. Your odd looks when I asked you about it. You and Sherlock acting like nothing happened. You don’t remember.” Panic slapped across his face. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I should have kept my great big bloody mouth shut.”

“We…” John said again. Then he found more words. He found all the words and said them all at once. “No,” he said. “That’s not—no. We...shagged. No. Sherlock...I mean… I didn’t… You’re…” He shook his head. “No.”

Lestrade looked, at the moment, like a man who could have invented time travel out of sheer humiliated desire. “Mate,” he said. “I...I’m so sorry. I thought you knew. I thought… Well, it seemed like a long time coming, and—”

“It _what?_ ” John asked.

“Well you know how the two of you are,” Lestrade said.

John gaped at him. _Clearly I don’t, mate._

“The way you…” Lestrade clutched at his pint as if it would bring him luck in this catastrophe of a conversation, “follow each other. The way you look at each other.”

“ _Look_ at…?” John was sputtering again, words coming out in chunks. “I don’t… And he _certainly_ doesn’t…” He shook his head again, regrouping. He was getting sidetracked. “You’re wrong,” he said. “Whatever you think happened that night. You’re wrong.”

Lestrade had a look like he was about to tell a small child there was no such thing as Santa Claus and really, _really_ didn’t want to. “I’m not,” he said. “There were a lot of calls in about you two, John. A _lot._ Indecent exposure. Lewd acts in—”

“No,” John said, burying his face in his hands. There was that brick wall again, right in front of him. He could practically feel the sharp ridges of the stone against his hands, under his nails. And that sound again that someone was making. He would say it was him, but he hadn’t heard himself make such a sound before.

Lestrade was fiddling with something, pulling his mobile out of his pocket. “I maybe should have just let you go on not knowing,” he said. “I maybe shouldn’t keep on about it. But...if it were me, I guess I would want to know.” He held his mobile out between the two of them. He had a voicemail pulled up. He hit _play_.

 _Sorry to ring you up at this hour, sir_ , a voice said. _I know it’s late. Knew it was a long shot that we’d get you. But—well, he insisted. Kept insisting. Anyway, we had a couple of arrests tonight, said they knew you. Said to call you, that you’d get it sorted. Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. They were arrested for—_ the man’s voice broke off. There was a pause where he cleared his throat, or maybe choked back a laugh. It was difficult to tell. _Well sir, they were caught buggering each other in an alley. We had a lot of calls in. Apparently they put on quite a show. We caught the end of it._ Yes, the man was definitely trying to choke back a laugh, that much was clear. _Anyway, that Sherlock Holmes fellow insisted we call you. Wouldn’t shut up about it. So. You’ll find the both of them in the drunk tank when you get in tomorrow. If we don’t have to separate them, that is._

The message ended. Lestrade pocketed his mobile.

John stared at the space between them where the mobile just was, unblinking.

“I held on to the message,” Lestrade said, “because… Well, the two of you finally shagging actually won me quite a bit of money in a pool with some of my mates. I knew they’d want proof, and…”

John pressed his eyes closed. He rubbed his temples. It felt as if his brain had been cooked on high and was currently a bit charred and smoldering.

“So,” he said. “Sherlock and I. We…” He looked up at Lestrade.

Lestrade nodded. “Yeah,” he said. You did.”

“Right,” John said. “Right.” Suddenly, breathing was a challenge. A real challenge. The slow-motion panic attack had finally kicked into high gear. “God,” he said, pushing himself away from the table, popping to his feet so quickly he nearly knocked everything over, including himself. “Right. I’d best be going, then.”

“John.” Lestrade was on his feet, a tentative hand reaching out for him but not so foolish as to actually touch him. “Wait. I’m sorry, mate. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“It’s fine,” John said, absolutely not making eye contact. It was likely he could never make eye contact with Lestrade ever again. “Well. It’s not...fine. But…” Unsure of how exactly to finish that sentence, John opted for silence. He turned on his heel and strode out of the pub, eyes staring intently at his own shoes as Lestrade’s protests faded into the background. He was aware that he hadn’t given Lestrade any money for the drinks, but it seemed much less pressing than the fact that he was currently hyperventilating.

He erupted from the pub and onto the street with a gasp that scared a few nearby pedestrians and sucked in the night air as if it might save his life, which it likely wouldn’t. He bent over, trying to breathe. He was unsuccessful. He leaned back against the brick exterior of the pub and was nearly bulldozed by a memory of his back grinding against brick, tearing at his jacket, lifted in the air, his legs—

“Oh fuck,” he said, pushing himself away from the wall. Two women crossed the street to avoid him. He dug his fingers into his hair. “Fuck.”

He felt as if he might be sick. He folded in double, coughing, catching himself with a hand on the wall. Another memory—his palms pressed to a wall, fingernails digging into the brick, holding himself upright, pushing back against—

John straightened. His head swam. He stumbled forward. He needed to leave, needed to get away from walls, apparently. Walls were no good, especially brick walls. As it turned out, there were brick walls everywhere in this bloody city. John wondered when that happened.

John felt as though the city had flipped and he didn’t know north from south anymore. Everything was disorienting, wrong. Images flashed into his mind—Sherlock standing behind him at the kitchen counter at Baker Street, John perched in the crook of Sherlock’s legs and mouthing at his cock through his trousers, the two of them running through the streets, panting and laughing, Sherlock fucking him so hard in an alleyway that he couldn’t breathe, Sherlock shaking his hand on a tarmac and John wanting nothing more than to wrap his arms around him and never let go, Sherlock’s mouth on his, John pulling Sherlock’s mouth against his, Sherlock lifting him up, up, up…

Some of those were dreams. At this point, John had dreamed about Sherlock so much that half of his memory wasn’t even real. These images, they weren’t real. John couldn’t tell what was real. John himself didn’t feel real at the moment. His lungs were on fire and his head was a balloon and he couldn’t feel his legs. London was a roar of noise and lights and hazy-faced pedestrians ducking out of his way. It all felt as if it might be happening to someone else, someone who didn’t have a solid hold on their life.

He kept walking.

John recalled an old story about a man who bought a pack of biscuits at an airport before boarding his plane. Once on the plane, the man opened his biscuits and ate one. To his horror, the bloke sitting next to him on his plane—a total stranger—reached over and took a biscuit from his pack, ate it. The man was appalled but, being British, said nothing. He ate another biscuit. The stranger ate another biscuit. And so on. It continued in this way until the biscuits were gone and the flight was over. The man was filled with a righteous rage. The bloke next to him only smiled and exited the plane. The man gathered up his belongings and reached into his bag only to find...the pack of biscuits he bought earlier. As it turned out, the man was the biscuit thief the whole time and didn’t even know it.

Somewhere in John’s rapid-firing, disjointed mind, he felt quite like the biscuit-thieving man at the moment. It both did and didn’t make sense simultaneously.

It was properly late by the time John realized he was still walking, the traffic thin and pedestrians few and far between. John’s brain emerged from its panic attack just long enough to remind him that he ought to stop walking and consider finding a cab. At the very least, his brain suggested, he ought to figure out where he was. John looked up, searching for the nearest street sign. He found it. He pressed his eyes shut.

Right.

He should have known as much. Here John thought he was wandering aimlessly, getting himself hopelessly lost in the city. Of course he had walked to Baker Street. Of course.

John considered turning around and walking away. He considered finding a cab and paying the driver however much money he had in his wallet to take him far the hell away from here. He considered going home, finding Mary, telling her everything and begging for forgiveness.

He only considered those things for a moment. If that.

The light was on in the window of the flat; Sherlock, of course, was at home and awake. He always heard the door open, always heard visitors as they climbed the stairs into the flat. He had long since memorized John’s footsteps and would know it was him.

Sherlock sat at the kitchen table when John reached the flat, scrutinizing something in his microscope that looked to be a very, _very_ old bit of linguini. His head lifted as John approached the door to the kitchen. For a moment, Sherlock almost looked surprised, flustered.

“John,” he said.

John said nothing. He realized what he must look like—skin clammy from a long stroll through the cold night, face distorted from lack of sleep and a very recent panic attack, hair a mess after having more than a little aggression taken out upon it.

Sherlock’s brow furrowed. He was scrutinizing, deducing, drawing conclusions about John’s expression and why he looked that way. He didn’t ask why John was there or what was wrong—he was on his way to figuring it out.

John decided he would save Sherlock the trouble.

“We shagged,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you for reading. Your tolerance for angst is impeccable and your comments and kudos make my heart sparkle.
> 
> Big fluffy hearts,
> 
> Arwa
> 
> (also: https://arwamachine.tumblr.com/)


	9. Oh How We Danced

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "What are we supposed to do," John asked, "now that this has happened?" He looked as if he very much expected Sherlock to have an answer.
> 
> "We can carry on as we always have," Sherlock said. "Sherlock Holmes and his friend and colleague, Doctor John Watson. We can act as if it never happened."
> 
> John's jaw tensed. He nodded. "Right," he said. "Right. I suppose we could."
> 
> "Unless," Sherlock said, "we don't want to."

Sherlock felt as if the floor went out from under him. He blinked.

“We shagged,” John repeated.

Sherlock could tell that his mouth had fallen open. He shut it.

John looked like hell. His eyes were wild and his hair was everywhere and his hands were fists at his sides. The explosion that Sherlock knew would come if John found out had finally detonated, and John looked like debris. John stared at Sherlock, clearly waiting for a response. Sherlock, for one of the few times in his life, had none.

These past few weeks had been monstrous. Sherlock had intentionally kept his distance from John and he felt John doing the same. Sherlock had overstepped that night, he knew. He was too provocative; he pushed John away. Sherlock hated himself for being too eager, for letting what he felt for John make things uncomfortable between the two of them. He figured it was best for the both of them to separate for a while, at least until Sherlock could trust himself to behave normally around John, whenever that would be. Being apart from John felt as if someone was slowly removing Sherlock’s skin, but it was how it had to be.

He studied John. John wavered slightly in the doorway. He was inebriated earlier—he didn’t need much to get him inebriated now that Rosie was here—but had sobered up quickly. He was dressed smartly—too casual for work but too trendy for lounging around the flat. He had been out with someone.

“Lestrade,” Sherlock said, standing to face John. “You were out for pints with Lestrade. Lestrade cleared the charges against us, so he knew. He assumed you knew too.” Sherlock couldn’t believe that, after all the months that had passed, this was the first time this fact occurred to him. He wondered if sentiment hadn’t given him some sort of brain damage.

“You knew,” John said.

Sherlock nodded. Meeting John’s eyes was suddenly a challenge.

“You knew,” John repeated. “You knew and you didn’t… Why didn’t you tell me, Sherlock? Why didn’t you—” He closed his eyes. Exhaled. Regrouped. “How long have you known?”

“Since your wedding,” Sherlock said.

John pressed his hands to his eyes. He exhaled again, a shaking, forceful thing.

“I didn’t always know,” Sherlock said, words flying from his mouth without checking with him first. “Right after, I didn’t remember either. I didn’t take advantage, you have to know—we were both very… I wouldn’t have ever…” He shook his head. “Not relevant. If I had remembered right after, I would have... Well, I don’t know. I didn’t choose to remember. But at your wedding, after the dance, right when you found out about the baby, you smiled at me and… It doesn’t matter.” Sherlock paused, tried to organize the words spilling out of him. “And then you were married,” he said. “You and Mary. And...and Rosie on the way. And I...I couldn’t. I’m sorry.”

John looked sorry as well, for reasons Sherlock couldn’t quite deduce. “You’ve known since my wedding,” he said. He shook his head, blinked. “God. All the things that have happened since then.”

Sherlock nodded. It felt like ages. He didn’t have to be reminded.

“Are you…” John seemed to be at a loss for words, “okay?”

The answer to that question, of course, was decidedly _no_ , but Sherlock didn’t have much time to consider how else he could respond before John continued.

“Because—Christ, Sherlock—I’m having a bloody panic attack over here.”

Indeed, John looked panicked. His skin was pale and his eyes were bloodshot and his hands were trembling. The whole of his body seemed to tremble, now that Sherlock was looking—he was practically vibrating with tension. If Sherlock had his way, he would have crossed the distance between them and wrapped his arms around John, held him close until the panic melted out of his body. However, Sherlock very much did _not_ have his way in this situation and immediately eliminated the first dozen or so comforting-John plans that came to mind.

“Tea?” he asked.

Wrong. “ _Tea_?” John spat. “I come here because I find out we got pissed and shagged nearly a year ago—something you’ve known about for a _while_ , apparently—and you offer me bloody _tea_?”

It was a poor idea, Sherlock knew, but in his defense it was very far down on the list of comforting-John plans his brain had generated. “No tea, then,” he said.

“Are you not panicking?” John asked, likely a bit louder than was strictly needed. “How are you not panicking?”

“Well, I’ve had a bit of time to—”

“ _I’m_ bloody panicking.”

Sherlock grimaced. “I see that.”

John paced a bit, moving about near the doorway yet still being sure to keep a respectable distance from Sherlock. “I mean, it’s…” he gestured between the two of them. “I haven’t...not in a while, anyway… And you don’t… I mean, I thought you didn’t…”

“You _thought_.”

“Right,” John said, scrutinizing Sherlock for a moment before digging his hands into his hair and resuming his pacing. “I just didn’t think you...for _me_.”

Words, whole paragraphs leapt to Sherlock’s mind, things he could say to John, very precise language he could use to explain to John just what Sherlock felt for him, exactly what that night had meant, how every moment since had been some strange sort of hell, save for the moments where John was there, smiling at him. The words stopped just at his lips.

“Christ,” John said, running a hand over his face. “Mary. What am I going to do, Sherlock?”

Sherlock’s mouth opened and closed. He shook his head. All the words fell out of his mind and he was left standing in the kitchen, arms dangling at his sides like an idiot.

“I cheated on my fiancé, Sherlock,” John moaned into his hands. “On my _wife._ I’ve never cheated before, not even when I was a dumb kid at uni. Now I’m just one of those arsehole husbands who throws everything away for—”

John glanced up at Sherlock. Sherlock’s gaze dropped to his shoes. It was hard for this not to sting a bit.

“That’s not what—” John's face softened slightly. “I didn’t mean it like that.” His hand lifted, as if he were about to reach out to Sherlock. He thought better of it. “What are we supposed to do with this, Sherlock?” he asked.

Sherlock shook his head. He had nearly a full year of a head start on John in this area and hadn’t come any closer to answering that question.

“What are we supposed to do,” John continued, “now that this has happened?” He looked as if he very much expected Sherlock to have an answer.

“I don’t think,” Sherlock said, “that we have to do anything.”

John stared at him with intensity, his eyes glossy.

“We can carry on as we always have,” Sherlock said. “Sherlock Holmes and his friend and colleague, Doctor John Watson. We can act as if it never happened.” The words felt as if they were made of knives. Sherlock wondered if his throat would bleed from them.

John’s jaw tensed. He nodded. “Right,” he said. “Right. I suppose we could.” He looked at his feet.

Sherlock felt himself rapidly losing his battle with self-control. He bit at his lip, doing his best to physically prevent the next words from coming out of his mouth. He failed.

“Unless,” Sherlock said, the words so quiet it was difficult for him to even hear, “we don’t want to.”

John’s eyes snapped up to meet his. His face looked in danger of folding in on itself. “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t you dare.”

“If pretending isn’t possible,” Sherlock continued. “For either of us. We don’t have to pretend.” _I don’t want to pretend, John._

John shook his head. “No,” he said. “Don’t you dare say that to me. Not now.”

“I’m only pointing out,” Sherlock said, barely able to look him in the eye, “that we have choices.”

“Sherlock,” John hissed, his voice wavering. “You bloody well know that I can't entertain any of those choices. I made my choice, Sherlock. As you once pointed out to me. I’ve bloody made my choice.”

Sherlock nodded. The knives in his throat were back. He was definitely bleeding. “I know.”

“And you have no right,” John whispered, “absolutely no right to ask me...to suggest to me…”

Sherlock pressed his eyes closed. “I know,” he said. “It’s unfair.”

“You’re goddamn right it’s unfair,” John said. His voice wasn’t quite in one piece anymore. “This whole bloody situation is unfair. Everything about this is unfair.” John sighed, took several deep breaths. He shook his head. “You know I still can’t even remember most of it?”

Sherlock’s eyes popped open. He studied John. “You can’t?”

“I’ve got bits and pieces,” John said, tapping his fingers against his head as if trying to dislodge something. “I keep seeing...a wall.” He looked to Sherlock for confirmation.

Sherlock nodded.

“Great,” John said. Sherlock could practically see John’s brain shift as it incorporated this new information. “So. You remember?”

Sherlock nodded.

“All of it?”

Sherlock’s eyes dipped low. He nodded again.

“Did we use protection?” John asked.

Nod.

“That’s something, at least,” John muttered. He cleared his throat. “So. Based on what I remember. You were...behind me?”

Sherlock averted his eyes once more. “Yes.”

“Right,” John said, once again taking time to acclimate to the new knowledge. “Well. That makes a few things make a bit more sense.”

Sherlock furrowed his brow at John, but John seemed mainly to be talking to himself.

John cleared his throat again. “Who…” John very much looked as if he did not want to ask the question leaving his mouth. “Who...started it?”

Sherlock blinked at John. “You really don’t remember?”

John shook his head. “I guess it doesn’t matter,” he said. “It happened. It doesn’t make a difference who started it.” He shrugged. “I guess it’s for the best that I don’t remember.”

“Is it?”

John looked up at Sherlock. “What are you saying?”

Maintaining eye contact was more challenging than it had any right to be. “Do you want to remember, John?”

John’s mouth moved, and Sherlock could have sworn he saw it starting to form the word _yes._ John shook his head. “No,” he said. “No I don’t.” His eyes narrowed, his anger starting to build back up on itself. “Why would I want to remember, Sherlock? That one night could have cost me my marriage—it still _could,_ for Christ’s sake. Why the hell would I want to remember it?”

Sherlock looked away again. It had been a poor question.

“God, Sherlock, all I can think about is what Mary will say—what she’ll _do_ —when she finds out.” John was nearing shouting again. “She could leave me, Sherlock. She could leave and take Rosie and she’d have every right to. I could lose my family because of that night.”

Sherlock nodded. He didn’t point out that John and Mary’s relationship hadn’t been the same since John found out about her past. He didn’t point out that John was uncertain about going back to her for months after Sherlock was shot, only returning out of a vague sense of obligation towards Rosie and this abstract concept of _family_ that John seemed to possess. He didn’t point out that John and Mary were spending most of their time away from each other as of late, driven apart by forces greater than the birth of their child. He didn’t point out that John stayed awake at half-three solely to text with Sherlock, that he seemed happier talking to Sherlock about nothing than he had in months. Sherlock didn’t point out any of that. He wasn’t an idiot.

“Seriously, Sherlock,” John was saying, “what possible good would remembering it do me? Do _you_ want to have remembered it? If you could forget it, have the whole night drop from your brain, wouldn’t you?”

Sherlock bit at his lips. The knives were back, and this time they worked their way up through his throat and into his face. His skin prickled and he felt his eyes start to sting. His voice, he knew, was not functional enough to explain any of it to John, but he hoped he could explain enough of it nonverbally. Because of course Sherlock wouldn’t wish to forget it. Even though it was to be the only time he had John in his arms, even though most of his moments since remembering had that flayed-skin feeling to them, even though remembering had ultimately made everything much, much worse, Sherlock wouldn’t have wished to forget even a second of it. It was John. Sherlock would remember until he died.

Some of the anger faded out of John’s face. He watched Sherlock, his mouth opening and closing, understanding.

“I…” he said. “I should go.”

Sherlock forced himself to nod. It took a moment for his head to agree to move in such a way. “Okay.”

“Maybe you’re right,” John said. “About us not needing to do anything. We can just pretend it never happened. Just go on as usual. Normal.”

Sherlock wondered what _normal_ meant for them anymore. Nothing about these past several months felt particularly normal. “Can you do that?” Sherlock asked quietly. “Can you pretend?”

“I don’t know,” John said, and it looked as if the words left him before he had a chance to stop them. “I have to, Sherlock. It was just…” he shook his head, regrouped. “It was just a drunk shag. That’s all. It was just the once. It didn’t mean anything. Hell, I can’t even _remember_ most of it.” He struck a hand through the air, decisive. “It was nothing.”

Sherlock felt as if a knife had sliced through him. “Nothing,” he repeated.

John looked up at him, scanning his face for clues. John was notoriously bad at scanning for clues. “So we agree, then?” he asked.

Sherlock did his best to keep his face devoid of clues. “It would appear so,” he said.

John’s eyes—the color of still waters—rippled, a shimmer of uncertainty. “It was nothing,” he said.

“Nothing,” Sherlock replied.

John’s eyes remained fixed on Sherlock’s, seemingly for a second longer than planned. He blinked once he realized. “I should go,” he said. He was repeating himself.

“Okay,” Sherlock said.

John turned, pointing his body towards the stairs, the door, the street that led away from Baker Street and back towards the flat he shared with Mary, far away from Sherlock.

He didn’t descend the stairs. He paused in the doorway, his hand pressed to the door jamb, his back to Sherlock.

“I dreamed you,” John said.

Sherlock said nothing. He waited.

John turned. “I dreamed of you,” he said. “I keep dreaming of you. I keep…” he shook his head.

Sherlock took a step forward, the smallest he could muster. “You have?” he asked.

“I can’t figure out…” John said, his hand in his hair, “I can’t tell what’s real anymore. I don’t know. I can’t remember—at least, I don’t think I can.”

Sherlock took another step forward.

“I remember bits,” John said. “I think I do, anyway. But I don’t know if they were real or a dream. It’s all...” he waved his hands about his head, “muddled together.” His eyes met Sherlock’s. John looked weary, wrecked. “I’ve had so many dreams about you, Sherlock.”

Sherlock took another step forward. “I dreamed of you too, John,” he said quietly.

“I know it’s real,” John said. “But it doesn’t....it doesn’t feel real. And I can’t remember it, only pieces, and it doesn’t feel… I can’t…”

Sherlock was just in front of John now. He could reach out and touch him if he’d like, but he didn’t dare. John looked up at him, mouth open, searching for words that were just beyond him.

“Do you want it to be real, John?” Sherlock asked.

John blinked, his eyes wide and shimmering.

“It can be real, you know,” Sherlock said, his voice so quiet it was barely sound. “I can make it real.”

John swallowed. “Sherlock…”

“Do you want me to?” Sherlock asked, hands clenched at his sides because otherwise they would be on John, wherever they could reach. “Do you want it to be real?”

John closed his eyes. Sherlock could see his face start to patch itself back up, turn into the soldier-wall he wore when things became particularly dangerous. _He’s going to say no,_ Sherlock thought. It would hurt like hell, that no. It would be a bullet to the chest.

John opened his mouth. His eyes remained closed.

“Yes,” he said, “God yes. I want it to be real.”

It was all Sherlock needed to hear. He took John’s face in his hands and brought their mouths together with violence. Care was best left for more certain times—today demanded urgency. John gasped against him and froze. For one terrible moment Sherlock thought he would pull away, but then John made a noise like he was dying and wrapped his arms around Sherlock in a grip from which Sherlock wasn’t certain he could escape. John’s lips parted and Sherlock felt John’s tongue move against his and he was tasting John, _finally_ tasting him again, and for a moment Sherlock thought his legs would go out from under him. John tasted of the beer he had earlier that evening and the cold from the night air but there was that taste that Sherlock hadn’t forgotten, couldn’t forget no matter how he tried. John twisted Sherlock's shirt in his fingers and kissed him with abandon and it was all so perfect Sherlock could have cried.

Sherlock tugged John away from the doorway. He needed John away from the stairs, away from the door, away from any route he could possibly take to leave the flat, leave Baker Street, leave Sherlock. Sherlock swung the both of them around and shoved John into the kitchen. John’s arse bumped against the kitchen table and several beakers toppled to the ground, shattering into shards.

“Christ, Sherlock,” John warned, but he didn’t move his mouth from Sherlock’s.

Sherlock pressed his body flush against John’s, shoving John into the table. He could feel John through his trousers, his cock rapidly hardening, nudging at the fabric. Sherlock ground against John and pushed him into the table with aggression and John moaned and his cock nearly leapt in his trousers and Sherlock made several very important deductions about John’s preferences.

Sherlock grappled with John’s jacket, wrenching it off his shoulders, down his arms. John released Sherlock just long enough to wriggle out of it and Sherlock tossed the thing to the side. It collided with something on the counter and several objects crashed to the floor. Sherlock had never cared less about anything in his life. He tore at John’s shirt, barely registering the buttons that popped from their stitches. John tugged at Sherlock’s shirt, his belt, his trousers. Everything was disorganized, messy. Something else tipped over on the table, rolled, met the edge and careened to the floor. More breaking glass. Sherlock laughed. He hoped they’d destroy the entirety of the kitchen. He wanted everything in the flat to be in pieces by the time they were done.

But then John whispered _bedroom_ into Sherlock’s mouth and it seemed like the best idea either of them ever had.

By the time they made it to Sherlock’s bed, John was down to his vest and Sherlock’s shirt was off completely and both of their trousers were open. They fell side-by-side onto Sherlock’s mattress, mouths on each other’s, limbs everywhere. Sherlock wrapped his arm around John, grabbing at his arse, pulling him close. He could hear the rattle of unhooked belts, the scrape of zippers as their hips ground together. John was hard, so hard against him. Sherlock hooked a leg over John’s hips and set a little rhythm, thrusting himself against John in teasing strokes. John made a choked sound as they slid together. His hands were in Sherlock’s hair, his tongue moving against Sherlock’s.

“You feel familiar,” John said.

“I am,” Sherlock replied.

Sherlock moved his mouth to John’s jaw, his neck. He had so much of John to taste.

“Tell me how it happened,” John breathed, hips bucking against Sherlock’s. “That night. Help me remember.”

Sherlock ran his mouth along John’s jaw. He could feel the stubble against his tongue, hints of regrowth so long after John’s morning shave. “We ran into the alley,” Sherlock said. “We were breathless, laughing.” He nipped at John’s jaw. “Touching.” He felt John smile against him and moved his lips upward, kissing at the swell of John’s cheeks. “You were taking the piss because I passed out in that client’s flat.”

“With your arse in the air,” John said. He laughed. Sherlock felt the sound vibrate against his lips.

“With my arse in the air,” Sherlock said. He nudged John’s head to the side, ran his tongue along John’s earlobe. John made a little gasping noise. “You said you should’ve taken pictures of me.”

“And you told me...” John said, breath hitching as Sherlock slid his tongue into his ear. “You told me what I’d do with the pictures.”

Sherlock nodded. He let his nose graze along John’s cheekbone.

“And then—” he sank his mouth into John’s.

John twisted his fingers into Sherlock’s hair, moaning against his mouth. Sherlock rolled the both of them over, moving so he was on top of John, a thigh pressed between his legs. Sherlock could feel John’s heart hammering against him, but John’s hands were steady as they moved down Sherlock’s body. John writhed underneath Sherlock, rocking his hips against him. The two were out of breath when they separated.

“And then,” Sherlock said, “I had you like this.” He grabbed at John’s legs, hoisting them around his waist. “Against the wall.” He slid his body between John’s thighs, grinding his erection against John’s.

John sucked in air, his head tipping back. He tightened his legs around Sherlock, pulling his hips up to meet his thrusts. “Oh Christ,” he said. “Yes. Yes you did.” He ran his hands down Sherlock’s back, grasping, pulling, guiding him closer, faster.

“Harder,” John said. “Go harder.”

Sherlock complied, grinding himself against John as forcefully as he could manage. He could feel John against him, his cock hard and hot through the thin fabric of his pants. Sherlock was nearly bursting out of his own pants, a patch of preejaculate already soaking through. He wondered if they would come like this, trousers still on and grinding against each other like animals. Sherlock moaned. Not if he could help it, they wouldn’t.

“Then,” he said, allowing a hand to run down the side of John’s body, over his hip, “I had my fingers,” he ran his hand over John’s arse, pressing a finger just against his hole, “here.”

John let out a noise that was part groan, part whimper. His lips moved, mouthing out a curse that never found sound.

Sherlock bit at John’s soundless lips. “Do you want that again, John?” he asked.

John nodded.

Sherlock growled. He pressed another sloppy kiss to John’s barely-functioning mouth before popping off his body and making short work of the both of their clothes. Sherlock perched on the mattress, ready to crawl back on top of John, when John sat up, shifted to his knees.

“Wait,” he said, brushing his fingers along Sherlock’s arms. “Let me look at you.”

Ah. Sherlock considered that he saw quite a bit of John that night, his flushed cock, his straining arse, but John actually saw very little of Sherlock and likely remembered none of it. Sherlock sat back, allowing John’s eyes to run over his body. He watched as John took him in, taking his time as he scrutinized every bit of Sherlock. A flush grew over John’s chest. His eyes were hungry.

“Jesus, Sherlock,” he said. He ran his hands along Sherlock’s arms, down his chest. His fingers brushed over the little circular scar just underneath Sherlock’s heart, but he didn’t linger, allowing his touch to drift onwards. He moved his hands along Sherlock’s sides, eyes still roaming over the whole of Sherlock’s body. His hands drifted down to Sherlock’s hips, his thumbs tracing the crease between his hips and his thighs. John’s eyes were fixed on Sherlock’s cock, standing red and swollen, a drop of precome glistening at the tip. John’s gaze darted up to Sherlock’s, asking permission.

Sherlock took John’s hand and moved it to the part of him aching for touch.

John gasped as his fingers wrapped around Sherlock’s shaft, running up his cock in a long stroke that had Sherlock crying out as if he had been punched. Sherlock collapsed forward against John, clutching at his shoulders as John’s hands ran along him in a touch that would become too good too soon. Sherlock surged forward into John’s fist, moving his hips against John as John’s hand explored him, stroking, pulling, twisting. Sherlock mouthed at John’s shoulder, neck, jaw. Broken sounds were stuttering out of his mouth, moans and gasps and orphaned syllables.

“I want you in me,” John whispered.

“Yes,” Sherlock breathed, placing something similar to a kiss on John’s lips. Then he had John by the thighs and yanked John’s legs out from under him. John flopped backwards on the mattress, a surprised noise jumping from his smiling mouth. Sherlock grabbed the lubricant from the nightstand and slicked his fingers within seconds. He folded himself over John, one hand planted at John’s side and the other rubbing between John’s cheeks, circling his hole with a slick finger. John made a whimpering noise, spreading his legs and tugging at Sherlock’s arm. Sherlock slipped the tip of his finger just inside, feeling the tight muscle yield slightly. John gasped and bore down, taking more of Sherlock’s finger. Sherlock heard himself moan as John pulled him in, feeling the molten perfection of John’s body against his finger. Sherlock pulsed his hand slightly, crooking his finger gently forward, and John’s body bowed, a low noise escaping his lips.

“This,” he said. “It was this. I missed this.”

Sherlock felt something shake loose inside himself. “I missed this too,” he whispered.

“More,” John said, moving against Sherlock’s hand. “I need more. Now.”

Sherlock moved his finger slowly, barely in and out. “More?” he asked, his lips quirking into a smile.

John writhed on the bed, pushing against Sherlock’s fingers, trying to move faster. “God,” he said. “I need you. God, how I need you. Please, Sherlock.”

Sherlock kissed at John’s lax lips and withdrew his finger, adding a second. John cursed, his head arching back. Sherlock started moving his fingers slowly inside of John, teasing, grazing only lightly against his prostate. John wriggled, kicking out his legs, trying to thrust his body against Sherlock.

 _God,_ Sherlock thought, _he’s so beautiful like this._

John’s cock was nearly purple against his stomach. A slick line of preejaculate stretched from the tip of his cock to his stomach and Sherlock’s mouth watered. He bent low and ran his tongue over the glistening slit, tasting the tang of John’s precome in his mouth. John nearly screamed, and Sherlock felt John’s arse clench around his fingers. Sherlock grinned and repeated the action, swirling his tongue around the head of John’s cock. John’s hands flew to Sherlock’s hair, fingernails digging into his scalp.

“You’re going to kill me,” John gasped.

“Wouldn’t want that,” Sherlock said, and licked a thin line up the length of John’s cock just as he pushed his fingers as far inside of John as he could. John let out a string of disjointed words, a muddled-together set of _fuck_ and _Sherlock_ and _that_ and _so good_ and _harder god harder_. Sherlock pistoned his fingers in and out of John, lapping at his cock playfully, cataloguing John’s reaction as he tongued at the ridge of the glans, sucked at his head, ran his lips against the thick vein that ran up his shaft. He could feel John getting close, his cock swelling, his bollocks drawing up, his cries reaching a fever pitch, but Sherlock didn’t want to stop, couldn’t stop.

“ _Sherlock_ ,” John gasped. His voice was broken. The whole of his body was flushed, glistening under a sheen of sweat. “I need you to fuck me. I need you to fuck me right now.” It could have made Sherlock come on the spot.

He withdrew his fingers, shuddering at the noise John made as he did so. Sherlock pulled a condom from the nightstand—the same ones he bought for John’s stag night what seemed like ages ago. John looked nearly incoherent, starting to roll himself onto his stomach with barely-functioning limbs. Sherlock caught him by the shoulder, pushed him back over.

“No,” Sherlock said. “I want to see you. This time, I want to see you.”

John’s glazed eyes met his and he nodded. Sherlock pushed a pillow underneath John’s hips and John hooked his legs over Sherlock’s thighs, tugging him closer nearly before Sherlock had time to slick himself up. Sherlock knelt low between John’s legs, bracing himself on John’s hips as he eased the tip of his cock inside. John gasped and Sherlock nearly toppled over as the tight ring of muscle enveloped him. Sherlock could feel John’s body adjusting to the intrusion and forced himself to go slow, agonizingly slow, when all he wanted to do was bury himself in John immediately. John’s head was tipped back, his eyes pressed closed, and he made little noises as Sherlock eased in bit by bit. Then all sound faded from John completely and his mouth opened and closed wordlessly, only little gasps escaping as Sherlock slowly filled him.

Sherlock was dizzy by the time he was fully inside, his body wavering as he looked down at John’s quivering frame. He gripped John’s thighs to steady himself. John was relaxing around him, but he was still so tight, so hot, and Sherlock was worried that the slightest twitch might end all of it for him and he didn’t want this moment to be over, not ever if he could help it. John’s mouth was still moving, sound still evading him, and his hands were touching timidly at Sherlock’s hips, as if anything more forceful might do damage to the both of them.

“Okay?” Sherlock asked. His voice sounded foreign to him.

John nodded, sound still absent. He looked okay, looked very okay, looked as if this was the most okay he had been in months, years. Finally, he found sound.

“Sherlock,” he gasped. “Oh god, Sherlock.” There was something to John’s voice, a sort of new knowledge, as if he had just made a discovery that was of the greatest importance.

“I know,” Sherlock said. He shifted slightly inside of John, the gentlest of pushes forward, and John sucked in air as if he were dying.

“I remember this,” John said. “I remember you.”

And Sherlock remembered John too, the perfect press of his body around Sherlock’s cock, the tenor of his voice as he cried out, the way the world whittled away to nothing around them, as if the whole of the universe blinked out of being for a moment solely to let the two of them exist like this.

“I know,” Sherlock said again, but his voice had gone soggy.

Sherlock wrapped his hands around John’s thighs, gripping his shaking legs as tight as he could, guiding himself. He moved slowly, slightly, withdrawing just a bit and pushing forward into John. John muttered a quiet curse and pushed back, moving himself gently against Sherlock. John nodded. _Move. Now._

Sherlock rocked his hips forward, still slow but deeper this time, filling John as much as he could. John whimpered and dropped a hand to his cock, giving himself a long pull. A part of Sherlock’s brain was urging him to move faster, to fuck John as hard as he could, to make him scream beneath him; however, he made himself go slowly, purposefully. He rolled his hips against John, sinking his cock deep into him with each long stroke. John’s eyes dipped closed and he made small noises as Sherlock moved inside him, back arching against the mattress, fingers wrapped around his leaking cock. Sherlock heard a moan escape his own lips—the sight of John spread out underneath him, wrapped and writhing around his cock, was nearly too beautiful to look upon.

“You fit,” John whispered. His voice was low, the words escaping his mouth on a spare breath. His lips dropped open after, no longer quite in control of their movements.

“I know,” Sherlock repeated, his own voice barely audible as well because John was right. The two of them fit together, and in much more than a literal sense. There was something so suddenly correct about it, like the long-sought answer to a befuddling question, or the way Sherlock could lay eyes on a smudge of dirt on a victim’s shoes and the whole mystery of a previously-unsolvable crime was unraveled, laid bare before him. It all made sense, it all made so much sense. Sherlock was certain it would take him apart, break him down into tiny pieces right in the moment. John moaned and shifted and took him deeper.

John was too far away. Sherlock tugged at John’s arms, pulling him into sitting.

“Closer,” Sherlock said. “I need you closer. I need to feel you here.”

Sherlock shifted back, sitting on his heels, and pulled John into his lap, John’s thighs pressed tightly around him, knees braced on the mattress. John gasped at the shift in angle but then Sherlock’s mouth was on his, an urgent kiss, all tongues and breath. Sherlock wrapped his arms around John, pulled their chests together. He thrust upwards into John and John moaned against his mouth. Sherlock set a slow rhythm, pushing into John with careful, shallow strokes. John’s fingers dug into Sherlock’s shoulders and he started moving, meeting each of Sherlock’s thrusts. Sherlock could feel John’s heart pounding against him, his chest expanding into Sherlock’s with each gasp he took. John’s eyes were pressed shut and he panted into Sherlock’s mouth, no longer able to return his kisses once again. Sherlock mouthed and bit at John’s lips.

“John,’ Sherlock whispered, “look at me.” John made a small noise and Sherlock thrust upwards with more fervor. “Look at me, John.”

John’s eyes opened and met Sherlock’s and it was as if he was seeing Sherlock for the first time. He looked astounded, like he was gazing upon a miracle.

“Sherlock,” he breathed. He blinked and his eyes were glistening.

Sherlock felt his lips curve into a smile. “Don’t take your eyes off me,” Sherlock said. He wrapped his arms tighter around John, holding him up, pulling him closer, guiding his movements on his cock. It was slower this way, more deliberate, each stroke of Sherlock’s cock sending shuddering waves of sensation through the both of their bodies. The two of them moved together, Sherlock thrusting up into John, John meeting his thrusts as best he could. Their faces were so close each shallow exhale fell into the other's mouth. They were barely kissing, lips brushing occasionally, sticking together, tasting the sweat that shone on their faces. They made small, wavering noises, little gasps and moans and whimpers as they moved. John’s arms were wrapped against Sherlock’s shoulders, his hands clutching at Sherlock’s hair. John never took his eyes off Sherlock, not for a moment.

“Sherlock,” John said, and again, “Sherlock,” and then again, “ _Sherlock_ ,” and Sherlock knew John was close, could hear it in the way his voice throbbed with urgency, could feel it in the way John moved against him, his hips speeding up as they bucked against Sherlock’s. John’s cock was pressed between their bodies and ground against Sherlock’s stomach, sliding in the slick of both of their sweat.

“Sherlock,” John whimpered. “Oh god, Sherlock.”

“Yes,” Sherlock whispered against John’s mouth. “Yes, John. God yes.”

John moved faster, bouncing on Sherlock’s lap, his body shaking, tightening. His breath was coming in staccato. His fingers dug into Sherlock’s scalp, pulling at his hair. The whole of him was trembling, Sherlock could practically feel it inside his own body. John never took his eyes off Sherlock.

“ _Sherlock_ ,” John gasped.

 _John_ , Sherlock mouthed, language slipping away for the moment. Sherlock shifted John slightly against him and angled himself so that his cock drove into John’s prostate with each thrust. He picked up speed, slamming into John, pulling John’s hips down against his, watching John’s eyes widen and his mouth drop open as Sherlock’s cock filled him again and again and again and then John broke open. The whole of his body shook with violence and he slammed himself against Sherlock, clenching and shuddering and gasping and screaming, screaming out Sherlock’s name. John’s cock erupted between their bodies, his come spurting and slicking the both of their chests and stomachs.

It was beautiful, Sherlock thought, John was so beautiful, and then he tipped over the edge as well, his brain stuttering to a stop and his body losing control. He snapped his hips into John and John’s arse twitched and clenched around him and everything in Sherlock’s world narrowed to a single point. Sherlock cried out and grabbed at John’s shoulders and pumped his hips and came hard, came so hard that he nearly toppled the both of them over. He crushed their mouths together, moaning, speaking John’s name into his own mouth, tasting him, tasting him, tasting him. Sherlock would never grow tired of the taste of John.

“God,” John whispered against him. “Oh my god, Sherlock.”

Sherlock tipped forward, lowering John back onto the bed. Sherlock slid down on top of him, stretching out his aching legs. For a moment, they stayed just like that—pressed close together, Sherlock still inside of John and moving in small, pulsing strokes, teasing at each other’s lips and breathing, just breathing. Sherlock felt like an object about to burst, something that had been filled to capacity and now the seams were starting to split. He stroked at John’s face, pushing his sweat-matted hair off his forehead. John smiled up at him and Sherlock was sure he heard seams pop. Slowly, Sherlock withdrew, kissing the little gasp out of John’s mouth. Sherlock slipped off the condom, tossed it somewhere. He would manage all that later, much later. He collapsed at John’s side, not caring about the mess on his chest that spread onto the sheets. John shifted, facing him, and Sherlock draped an arm around him, tracing along John’s side with his fingers. John wrapped a palm around the nape of Sherlock’s neck, tugging their foreheads together and pressing the lightest of kisses to Sherlock’s lips, and Sherlock wondered if anybody had ever died from feeling so much for one person or if he would be the first.

For a while, the only sound in the room was their breathing as it panted, slowed, and stilled, punctuated by the occasional press of lips to lips. It felt as if time had slowed or possibly stopped altogether. Sherlock wished it would never start up again.

John opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. He was looking for words, and Sherlock hoped that he’d never find them because they were unlikely to be any good. John’s words would only take him away and Sherlock needed him here, needed him here always now because what they had just done had forged them together in some inexplicable way and if John left he would rip out a large chunk of Sherlock and Sherlock was reasonably certain the blood loss would be fatal.

John took a deep breath.

“That,” John said, “was…” He shook his head. “That wasn’t…” He shook his head again, the words just out of reach.

Sherlock understood. That wasn’t just a simple shag that had happened, that was something else. To call what had happened a simple shag was to call the Mona Lisa a clever drawing, or Beethoven’s symphonies a series of catchy jingles.

“Sherlock,” John said. “What…” he closed his eyes, opened them again, searched for the words, “happened? Just now. What’s happened here? Between us?”

Sherlock ran his fingers across John’s cheek. He considered closing his eyes—it might be easier for everyone involved if he did—but decided against it. He could feel everything in his body fighting to keep the words from escaping his lips. His throat burned at the effort.

“I’m afraid,” he said, “that I’m in love with you.”

John blinked.

He blinked again.

“What?” he asked.

Sherlock felt a sad smile twitch across his lips. John heard him, but Sherlock repeated himself anyway. “I love you,” he said.

John shook his head. A little puff of a laugh escaped his lips. “No,” he said.

Sherlock continued the slow stroke of his fingers across John’s face. John would get there. He just needed to wait this out.

“No,” John said again. No puff of laughter this time.

Sherlock waited.

John grabbed the hand stroking at his face, stilling Sherlock’s fingers. “No,” he said, but it wasn’t disbelief anymore. It was a command.

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock said, because some things couldn’t be commanded. Some things were written in indelible ink.

John rolled over, Sherlock’s fingers sliding off his face. He dug the heels of his palms into his eyes, moaning. “How,” he said. “How could you say that to me? Now. How could you say that to me now, after all this time?”

Sherlock wished that John would lift his hands from his eyes, because he had the feeling that he ought to be memorizing, cataloguing the bits of John’s face for permanent storage in his Mind Palace before he lost the chance forever, and he very much wanted to be sure he got John’s eyes just right.

“Are you saying that because we…” John gestured between the two of them. “Are you saying it because you think that’s what people are supposed to say after they…”

Sherlock frowned. “Don’t be an idiot,” he said. “I’ve loved you for a very long time.”

John looked at Sherlock as if he was an alien beamed down from the sky, little green antennae and everything. “No,” he said. “No, because you’re Sherlock Holmes. You don’t...you don’t feel those sorts of things.”

“I’m reasonably certain I know what I feel, John,” Sherlock said. He swallowed. “I ought to have told you sooner. I only recently figured it out myself.”

John was shaking his head at the ceiling. His breathing was going a bit unsteady. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “I've managed to cock everything up, haven’t I?”

Sherlock could feel something start to bend inside of him, something that might break soon if pressed upon. Sherlock decided to press anyway. “John,” he said.

“No,” John said. “Don’t.”

Sherlock exhaled. “I know it’s not...good. But…”

“Please don’t,” John said. His eyes were closed, as if that might help him disappear.

“I have to know how you feel,” Sherlock said. “I hate not knowing.”

John covered his face with his hands, cursed. “You can’t ask me that, Sherlock,” he said.

The thing inside of Sherlock bent further. “Why not?”

John popped up in the bed, pushing himself away from Sherlock. “You know damned well why not,” he snapped. He swung his legs off the side of the bed, standing unsteadily.

Sherlock sat up. “Your situation,” he said, “does not physically prevent you from feeling.”

John shook his head, looking around the room for his clothes. “We are not,” he said, “having this conversation.”

“I’m not asking anything of you, John,” Sherlock said. “I wouldn’t ask that of you. Not that. I just need to know.”

John found his pants and tugged them on hastily. “No,” he said. “I’ve let this get out of hand. I’ve let it go sideways. I shouldn’t have—I never should have come over here. I never should have let it get this far.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Those fucking dreams,” he muttered. He shook his head, grabbed his trousers from the floor. “It was a drunken shag, Sherlock. It was a drunken shag and we let it get the better of us. And tonight...” He looked flummoxed. “I don’t know what the hell tonight was, but it was meaningless. Nothing.”

“You’re wrong,” Sherlock said. He wondered if he ought to be putting clothes on as well. He decided against it. “You’re wrong, John.”

“Yeah,” John said, cramming a leg into his trousers, “not sure I am this time.”

Sherlock sighed. “That night. In the alley. _You_ kissed _me_ , John.”

John stared at Sherlock, half-in, half-out of his trousers. “And?”

“You asked how it started,” Sherlock said. “ _You_ kissed _me_. And later, right before we—” Sherlock waved a hand, “you asked me if I knew how long you’ve wanted this.”

John’s mouth tightened. “I remember,” he said, stepping his other leg into his trousers and straightening.

“And after,” Sherlock continued, “we kissed and it felt very much like… It felt as it did just now. John.” Sherlock moved forward. He needed John to look at him again. “It might’ve been of questionable ethics, given your upcoming marriage. And our timing was certainly poor. But it wasn’t simply a drunken shag, John. And _this_ ,” Sherlock gestured around him, to the demolished bed, the room littered with stray bits of clothing, “wasn’t meaningless.” Sherlock hated how his voice wavered, how the burning in his throat was making it difficult to speak. “You know I'm right, John. You know it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” John said. He was going for his shirt now, carefully avoiding eye contact. “None of that matters.”

“Why not?”

“Because back at my flat, sleeping peacefully in her cot,” John shouted, shirt waving in his hand, “is a little girl who deserves to grow up with two parents. Who deserves a father who isn’t a lying, cheating scumbag who broke her family apart.”

“John…”

“And back at that same flat,” John continued, flinging the shirt onto his body, “is my _wife,_ Sherlock. The woman I pledged myself to. The woman I swore to be faithful to. And I have somehow managed to break that promise _twice._ ”

Sherlock’s throat had closed up. That thing inside of him was very close to breaking now. He could feel it start to splinter.

“So yeah, Sherlock. It doesn’t matter,” John spat. “It doesn’t matter what it was or what it meant because it can’t be anything more than a drunken shag. It can’t mean anything more than that. It was a mistake, Sherlock. That first night was a mistake and tonight was definitely, categorically a mistake. You understand?”

Sherlock nodded. Breathing wasn’t coming particularly easy at the moment.

John tried to button his shirt but half the buttons were missing. He looked down at himself. He hadn’t cleaned off before he leapt out of the bed, and semen was soaking through the fabric of his shirt. His clothes were wrinkled, stained, torn in places. John tipped his head back. “Christ,” he moaned. “I look guilty as sin.”

 _So stay,_ Sherlock thought. _Stay and have a shower and change into some of your old clothes that are still in your room upstairs. And then don’t leave after. Don’t ever leave._ Sherlock supposed it was fortunate that his throat didn’t seem to be working, preventing him from saying any of that.

“When Mary finds out. When I tell her,” John’s face looked broken, “she might not let me see you again, Sherlock. Do you understand? She might not let us have any more contact at all and she’d be well within her rights.”

That thing inside of Sherlock, the thing that was bent well past capacity, shattered. “Is that what you want?” he asked. His voice sounded like splinters.

John’s eyes were wet. “Of course not,” he said. “Of course not, Sherlock. You’re my best friend. Without you, I can’t…” John made a series of gestures but never quite finished his sentence. Sherlock, however, found the sentence to be finished enough. Without John, Sherlock also simply _couldn’t_. Full stop.

“It wasn’t a mistake, John,” Sherlock said.

John found his shoes, slipped them on without socks. “I know,” he said. “But it has to be.” He straightened, catching Sherlock’s eye.

For a moment, John looked as if he might move back to the bed. He looked as if he might wrap his arms around Sherlock, run his fingers through his curls, kiss him. He looked as if he might stay, even just for a moment longer.

Instead, he left.

Sherlock listened to John’s footsteps walk down the hallway, down the seventeen steps that led out of the flat, and out the front door. He heard the door shut firmly behind John.

The flat was empty. Everything was empty.

Sherlock lifted himself out of bed. He found his trousers and pulled them onto himself. The fabric pulled and stuck to his tacky skin. He didn’t care. He moved down the silent hallway and into the empty kitchen.

The kitchen looked like a crime scene, evidence of a struggle. The table was shoved to the side and one of the chairs had been tipped over. Cups and containers and beakers were knocked on their sides, rolled out of place. There was broken glass everywhere.

Sherlock walked into the kitchen, careful not to step on any of the shards. He eased himself into sitting, sinking down in the center of the floor and crossing his legs in front of him. Somewhere, a clock ticked away. He could faintly hear the din of the London night outside the flat, engines and horns and the occasional chatter of a pedestrian. Downstairs, Mrs. Hudson eased out of her creaking bed and padded down the hallway to use the loo. The active crime scene that was 221b Baker Street was completely ignored by all, and Sherlock sat very, very still, at home among the broken things.

* * *

John somehow landed the one cabbie in the entire city of London who wanted to make conversation, and he almost asked the bloke to pull over and let him out five times. As soon as John got into the cab, the cabbie had comments about John’s disheveled appearance ( _got into it tonight, did we mate?_ ) and questions about where John was heading so late at night ( _big plans for the evening, then?_ ), neither of which John answered. The man didn’t take the hint. He reminded John of someone, someone John did not need any help being reminded of at the moment, thank you very much.

John’s shirt was stuck to his chest and his pants felt slick against him and he was fully aware that he stunk of sex. He didn’t even want to be in a cab with himself at the moment.

He was not going to think about Sherlock.

John patted his trouser pockets. He hadn’t even thought to check to be sure he still had his mobile, wallet, keys. Thankfully, he felt all of them. He pulled his mobile out of his pocket, wincing in anticipation of what he might discover. He was out well past the hour he told Mary he’d return by and hadn’t thought to offer any sort of warning that he might be out later than expected after he’d left the pub in a panic. He couldn’t imagine this would put Mary in any sort of better mood. However, when he checked his mobile, he only saw two texts from Lestrade—lengthy apologies, the both of them—and nothing from Mary.

Odd, he thought. He wondered if he was getting the silent treatment. Already a bad omen for how the rest of John’s night was likely to go.

John wondered if he ought to send Mary a text to let her know that he was on his way home.

“Taking you to a residential area, I see,” the cabbie said. “Going home for the evening, then? Or got a party out there you’re not telling me about?”

John pocketed his mobile. “Going home,” he said.

He was not going to think about Sherlock. He was not going to think about Sherlock sitting on the bed with that broken expression on his face—eyes pleading with John not to leave—moments before John left. He was not going to think of Sherlock’s voice—barely sounding like Sherlock’s voice at all—as he told John that what happened between them wasn’t meaningless, wasn’t a mistake. He wasn’t going to think about his own response.

John dug his fingers into his leg.

“What’s it like living out here?” the cabbie asked. “You like it? It quiet?”

“It’s fine,” John said. “Quiet. Nice neighbors. Low crime.”

“Sounds a bit boring to me,” the cabbie said, then laughed at his own joke. John pressed his eyes closed.

 _Stick around_ , John thought. _There’s about to be a domestic._

Not telling Mary had crossed his mind—of _course_ it had crossed his mind. Earlier in the evening, he’d considered not telling her about the stag-do; he had been drunk, it was a year ago, and he’d spent most of that year not remembering it. Not really lying, that. Still, the thought of a lie that big made him sick to his stomach. He couldn’t have lived with himself, he knew. And after tonight—well, there was no way he couldn’t confess to this. This was too big, this was intentional. This was infidelity, plain and simple. This made the other lie, the stag-do lie, look like a little joke in comparison.

Besides, there was also the little fact that he looked like a man who had recently been shagged half to death that made him think Mary would figure the whole thing out before he even had a chance to open his mouth.

On a related note, John was not going to think about Sherlock. He was not going to think about Sherlock’s body on his, fingers in him, tongue gliding over his cock. He was not going to think about Sherlock sliding inside him with agonizing slowness, pulling him close and fucking him with an intensity that rearranged the colors in John’s mind.

He was not going to think about how his arse was gently throbbing and how he could feel the slick of the lube inside him and how he could still bloody smell Sherlock on his skin and how the whole of it was actually managing to get him a little hard again, despite everything.

John clenched his fists and wished he could snap each of his fingers in half. He’d deserve it.

“So,” the cabbie asked. “You got a family out here?

 _For the moment,_ John thought. _Ask me again in an hour._

“Wife,” he said. “Daughter.”

He didn’t want to think about Mary’s reaction, what she might do. She was likely to cry. She would definitely yell. She would feel shocked, betrayed. She’d have a right to. Sherlock was her friend too, of course. At least, she said he was. But, John reminded himself, she also shot him once. He couldn’t imagine what she might do after discovering _this._

John felt a stab of fear in his chest. He shook his head. _His_ fault. He would insist that the whole thing was his fault, not Sherlock’s. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch, because the whole thing _was_ his fault, more or less. It wasn't a lie. He was the one who kissed Sherlock at his stag-do. He was the one who walked straight to Baker Street tonight after learning that they shagged. He was the one who didn’t leave, the one who asked to remember. And he was the one who begged Sherlock tonight, who begged Sherlock to fuck him over and over again.

And then he was the one who left.

John was not going to think about how he nearly stayed. He was not going to think about how he nearly shucked his clothes right off again and crawled back onto the bed with Sherlock. He was not going to think about how he nearly pushed Sherlock down on the mattress and kissed him until the broken look was gone off his face, preferably forever.

“How old is your daughter?” the cabbie asked.

“Four months,” John said, and the words could barely make it out of his mouth.

Mary would be upset, angry, betrayed; however, it was Rosie John worried about. Mary could decide to leave, decide to make _John_ leave, and John would lose Rosie forever. Even if Mary consented to some shoddy custody arrangement and John got her every other weekend or some similar bullshit, it would never quite be the same. He grew up with enough mates whose fathers stepped out; even the ones who saw their fathers on the regular hated them. They were nothing but the bastards who did their mums wrong, and that was all John would be relegated to in Rosie’s life. That is, unless Mary was very, very merciful. Based on the admittedly little John knew about Mary these days, she did not strike him as the merciful type.

If Mary did choose to show a little mercy and let John stay, there was the question of Sherlock. Surely, Mary wouldn’t allow Sherlock to be a part of John’s life anymore—that was a certainty. This constituted the best-case scenario that John was facing, but it made him feel as if someone cracked him open with a bone saw and took out his organs one by one.

He was not going to think about what Sherlock said to him tonight. He was not going to think about how Sherlock lay at his side and ran his fingers along John’s cheek and spoke those bloody words that he would have killed to hear years ago, those bloody words he would have sworn Sherlock wasn’t capable of. He wasn’t going to think about how Sherlock looked at him with those eyes John could barely even imagine and spoke those words John had never expected and how John knew that Sherlock meant it with the whole of himself even as he told Sherlock he was wrong. Because John had known all along, hadn’t he? A part of him had known all along but didn’t let himself believe.

He was not, absolutely, categorically _not_ going to think about how he ought to have responded.

“Oi, mate,” the cabbie said, “everything alright back there?”

That was when John noticed that he was crying. He wiped a hand over his face, sniffed, tried to regain his composure. “Fine,” he said, with the voice of a man who was clearly lying.

“Anything you want to talk about?” the cabbie asked. “Been told I’m a good listener.”

John scoffed. _Sure mate—got a good one for you. As luck would have it, I shagged my best mate at my stag-do about a year ago. Didn’t even remember it until tonight. Been having these dreams about him ever since—erotic dreams, the kind you have a wank to the next morning. Anyway, as soon as I found out, I sprinted over to his flat and we shagged again. Bloody fantastic shag too, best of my life. Now he says he loves me, has loved me for ages. How did I respond? Sprinted out of there like the flat was on fire. Now I’m on my way home to confess all to my wife and pray to Christ she doesn’t kick me out on my arse and take my daughter away from me forever. Got any advice? ‘Cause I’m all ears at the moment._

“No,” John said.

They rode the rest of the way back to John’s flat in blessed silence.

John stood in front of the flat as the cab pulled away, bracing himself for the hell he had in store. The lights were out in the flat—Mary must be asleep. He thought he might wake her, go ahead and get this mess over with. Besides, it might be better to do this with Rosie asleep, so that they wouldn’t have to worry about fighting in front of her.

However, as John looked up at the flat, he noticed that _every_ room in the flat was dark, including Rosie’s. Odd, John thought. They usually kept a little light on in Rosie’s room. As quietly as possible, John unlocked the front door and walked inside.

The flat was pitch black and completely silent. John switched on the light on his mobile as he tiptoed up the stairs, trying to make as little noise as possible so as not to wake Rosie. He paused outside of her room. The door was cracked open and John poked his head inside. No noise emanated from the room, not the little sleep-noises Rosie made, not even the faint sound of breathing. John fumbled in the dark and switched on her nightlight. Her cot was empty. John’s brow furrowed. That was odd. Mary was supposed to watch Rosie tonight.

He stepped out of the room, moved towards the bedroom. The room was dark and just as silent as Rosie’s.

“Mary?” John said. Nothing.

He flicked on the light.

The bed was empty. It didn’t even look slept in—the blankets were wrinkle-free, the dozens of throw-pillows Mary insisted upon sitting pristinely atop the bed.

John didn’t like any of this.

“Mary?” he called out again, walking back through the upstairs hallway, flicking on lights as he went. “ _Mary_?” Nothing.

He darted back down the stairs, calling out her name. The flat was empty.

It was when he flicked on the light in the kitchen that he saw the note.

Mary had left it sitting in the center of the kitchen table. She must have assumed that he would see it immediately upon entering the flat. She must also have assumed that he would be back much earlier, when there was still some light in the flat. John snatched up the note.

_John—_

_First of all, Rosie is with Janine, so there’s no need to worry. She’ll keep her until tomorrow morning, so you don’t have to fret about picking her up tonight. I thought you might need some time with all this I’m about to tell you._

_I have to go away for a while—it is of the utmost importance that I do so, for both your and Rosie’s safety. I should have told you when I first became suspicious but I know how you are and I didn’t want to worry you, didn’t want to involve you. Someone has found me out, someone from my past. Someone dangerous. Someone angry, very angry with me for something I’ve done. I don’t know who and I don’t know what they’re after, but I do know that I am in danger and—by extension—so are you and Rosie. As such, I need to move the target far, far away._

There was more, much more. There was Mary swearing that she wasn’t running away, swearing that she wouldn’t be gone long, swearing that she would come home to the both of them as soon as she neutralized the danger, whatever the hell that meant. There was Mary forbidding John to come looking for her, forbidding him to get Sherlock involved to try to find her or help her, claiming that it would be impossible for them to find her anyway. There was Mary saying that she had a plan, don’t worry, and her plan simply involved getting as far away as possible. There was Mary begging him not to be angry with her and saying that she loved him, but by the time John got to that part of the note his head was spinning far too much to comprehend the meaning of the words.

He collapsed into one of the kitchen chairs. He ran a hand through his hair.

“Fuck,” he said.

 _Don’t come after me,_ the letter said.

“Fuck,” John said.

 _It’s too dangerous,_ the letter said. _Leave me to handle this on my own, in my own way._

“ _Fuck,_ ” John said.

It all made sense, of course. Mary spending increasing amounts of time away from the flat, not telling him where she was going, and returning with a distracted, tense look on her face. Now that he thought about it, Mary seemed hypervigilant as of late, asking John if he locked the doors at night, checking all the windows, looking over her shoulder when the two of them were out. Mary had been onto this for weeks, it would seem—scoping out the danger, determining if it made sense for her to stay or flee. The signs had been there, plain as day. John had been too wrapped up in himself to even bloody _see,_ let alone observe. If John hadn’t been so preoccupied with the state of his own subconscious, he might have noticed. He might have asked her about it. She might not have to be alone in this.

And where, John pondered, was he tonight while Mary made arrangements for their daughter, packed up her things, fled the city in fear for her life? Across town, getting shagged senseless by his best mate. Had Mary waited for him to return? Did she want to explain all of this to his face, to say goodbye in person? Had she waited for him as long as she could before scribbling out a note and slipping away into the night? If John had been there, would she have stayed?

John felt a nasty piece of loathing churn in the pit of his stomach.

 _Don’t come after me,_ the letter said, but of course John was going to. That was all a part of it, being married—spouses didn’t do things alone anymore; spouses were there to help each other. John felt he had been more than a little lax on his side of the spousal equation as of late.

Unfortunately, he had no idea how he could manage the feat of finding her or where to even start looking. He couldn’t manage it, of course. Not without help.

And he knew he shouldn’t, he knew he ought not to, he knew it was the very definition of self-centered unfairness, but there was only one person he thought of in the moment.

Sherlock, of course, picked up on the first ring.

“Sherlock,” John said, before Sherlock could speak a single word. “I know it’s not good for me to call you. I know it’s not okay. But it’s important.” He paused, took a deep breath. “Mary is gone. She’s in danger, Sherlock. Someone’s after her.” He pressed his eyes shut, hating every single cell in his selfish bastard of a body for what he was about to say. “I need your help.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading! Your responses to the previous chapter put the biggest smile on my face :)
> 
> Hearts,
> 
> Arwa
> 
> (Hey! https://arwamachine.tumblr.com/)


	10. Aboard a Shipwreck Train

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I won't press," Sherlock said. "And whatever your answer is, I will trust you and will say nothing more on the matter. But please tell me honestly, John—is this what you want?"
> 
> John nodded. "Yes," he said, his voice firm. "Yes it is."

Sherlock’s homeless network confirmed that Mary left their flat just after midnight and boarded the Tube. She took a bit of a convoluted route, stopping and changing lines and retracing her steps, but arrived at Heathrow Airport around four in the morning. Traveling light, one bloke said. Nothing more than a backpack.

John sat in the back of a cab with Sherlock, rubbing at his temples while Sherlock tapped nonstop at his mobile. Between Janine and Molly and Mrs. Hudson and even Harry, John was able to cobble together childcare for a week. He wasn’t particularly sure what he’d do with Rosie after that. Now, he and Sherlock were heading to the airstrip that housed Mycroft’s private plane—one of several favors Sherlock called in—although John was uncertain of the logic of getting on a plane without a destination in mind.

“She was smart,” Sherlock said, “taking the Tube to get to Heathrow. Less noticeable in a crowd of people. More bodies to throw in front of oneself if shots are fired.”

“Jesus,” John said. “She wouldn’t think like that, would she?”

Sherlock briefly glanced up from his mobile. “Of course not,” he said, a little too quickly, before returning to the task at hand.

“Sherlock,” John said, “how on earth are we going to figure out where she went? Her note said that all of her choices would be at random. The roll of a dice. She could be literally anywhere right now. And I doubt even your homeless network spans the entirety of the planet.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “And the two of you had the audacity to call _me_ a drama queen.”

John waited. He was trying not to push Sherlock too hard at the moment, given...well, everything.

Sherlock sighed. He looked up from his mobile. “Some choices cannot be random,” he said, “because the parameters of reality forbid it. Mary left your flat and headed—albeit in a roundabout manner—immediately to the airport. No finding a safehouse, no laying low in the city. What does that tell you?”

“She was in a hurry to leave,” John said.

“Exactly,” Sherlock said. “Now. Does someone leaving in a hurry have the time to schedule out an entire escape plan based on the roll of a dice? What if the dice told her she was to fly to Zambia? When do you think the next flight to Zambia out of London is? No, she would have chosen her next move based on what was immediately available to her.” Sherlock scrolled through his mobile. “The first flights out of Heathrow this morning were to one of only three cities—Paris, Amsterdam, and Frankfurt. That narrows the choices quite considerably, don’t you think?”

John had an idea. “Doesn’t Mycroft have some sort of security access at Heathrow?” he asked. “Could he have some way of figuring out if she bought a ticket or not? Boarded a flight?”

Sherlock looked at John as if he were the simplest of children. “Whoever is looking for her likely already knows her married name. She wouldn’t be so daft as to purchase a ticket in her _own name,_ now would she?”

“So, would she have used her real name, then?” John realized that he still—after a year of marriage to the woman—did not know what her real name was.

Sherlock cast an exasperated, somewhat pitying look at John.

“Oh,” John said. “Probably not. Whoever is looking for her probably knows her real name too.” John did his best not to consider that this person who wanted Mary dead knew more about John’s wife than he did. “So she…”

“...would have needed false papers,” Sherlock finished, apparently through waiting for John to figure it out on his own.

John’s brow furrowed. “Where the hell would she get something like that? And if she just left town this morning, how would she have had the time to—”

There was that pitying look again.

“Ah,” John said. “She already had them.” Mary already had the false papers, was already in possession of everything she needed to create a new identity and flee the country. John wondered how long ago she obtained them. Perhaps she always had them, for the whole of their relationship. Prepared at all times to run.

Sherlock lifted his hand and looked as if he was going to pat John on the shoulder, a consolatory touch. He thought better of it and went back to his mobile.

“So,” John said, moving the hell on from his current train of thought wherein his wife had a constant plan at the ready to abandon her family and assume a new identity. “We have a one in three chance of guessing which city she chose.”

“Not exactly,” Sherlock said. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense to flee to a city where one has no contacts. She would need to assume a new identity once there, different from the one associated with the plane ticket, and quickly.” Sherlock fingers flew over his phone. “Fortunately, I’ve maintained some of my Amsterdam contacts from my...” he glanced at John, “time away.”

“Being dead.”

“Temporarily dead,” Sherlock said, all eyes on his mobile. “I’ve got some German contacts too, but more centralized in Hamburg. Never quite made it to Frankfurt, I’m afraid. Pity. I hear the Alte Oper is lovely. So.” He looked up at John and grinned, that pretending-to-be-a-sociopath grin. “Fingers crossed for Amsterdam.”

“So the plan is,” John said, “you’re just going to text your contacts and ask if they’ve gotten any requests for new identities recently? On the off-chance that Mary knows the same people?”

“The market for convincing false paperwork is surprisingly narrow, John,” Sherlock said. “Very few people can do it well, and even fewer can do it well without being caught.” His phone buzzed. Sherlock studied his screen. His brow furrowed. “That’s a no for Amsterdam. Pity. I have far more contacts there. His phone buzzed again. His eyebrows raised. “My Hamburg person came through. Seems as if his business has expanded.” He grinned. “Frankfurt it is. Doubt we’ll have time to see the Alte Oper, though. Some other time.”

John’s lips twitched into a smile at Sherlock’s glee and for a moment it seemed just like any other case, with Sherlock getting a bit too swept up in the puzzle of it all, proving to the world that he had the genius to get to the root of a problem that was otherwise unsolvable. Reality, however, was never particularly far behind.

“So,” John said, feeling as if he should fill the obtrusive silence that fell between the two of them. “I just… You being willing to help right now… I know that we…” He cleared his throat. “I just wanted you to know…”

“We don’t need to discuss it,” Sherlock said.

John swallowed. “I know, but…”

“We don’t need to discuss it,” Sherlock repeated, his tone firm.

And so they didn’t.

It was a silent flight to Frankfurt. A flight attendant offered John a drink. It was half-seven in the morning. He accepted.

* * *

In Frankfurt, Mary’s new name was Lena Kowalska. Sherlock’s contact said she had long, braided hair and a flirty smile. He confirmed she was still traveling light, but had a different backpack than the one described by Sherlock’s homeless network. She was shedding herself, left and right.

John had recognized the backpack the homeless network described. He gave it to her for her birthday. Now it was in some skip in Germany.

“Don’t be stupid,” Sherlock said. “She probably burned it.”

Sherlock insisted that Mary wouldn’t be in the city for long. “This is a temporary stop,” he explained, typing madly at his mobile. “The first stop after the airport, that’s the most dangerous. Her business here consists of gaining a new identity and moving onward.”

Sherlock’s head had barely left his mobile since they landed. After nearly an hour of trying to steer an oblivious Sherlock around pedestrians on the pavement, John insisted the two sit down on a bench until Sherlock figured out their next move.

“She’s heading to Poland,” Sherlock said. “Her new identity assumes one of the most common combinations of names in Poland. What will make her instantly memorable in any other country will make her immediately forgettable to the Polish population.”

Sherlock researched all of the different routes into Poland by car or train or bus and calculated out probabilities while John felt largely useless.

“Do you think she’s going to hide out in Poland, then?” John asked.

“Unlikely,” Sherlock said.

Sherlock calculated out the most probable route that Mary took, as well as the most likely city she would stop in for the night. Sherlock said he still had connections in a few cities in Poland—Warsaw and Krakow—but he wouldn’t be surprised if they were all dead. “Not necessarily violent deaths,” Sherlock said. “One of them was very old.” He found them a car and John texted Molly to check in on Rosie. Rosie, apparently, had been crying for most of the morning. John felt a stab of guilt.

The drive to Poland was set to take them most of the day, although Sherlock was driving as if he intended to make it take half that time.

“You don’t think she flew?” John asked.

Sherlock shook his head. “No flights for her from here on out unless absolutely necessary. Too much security. Too many cameras. Too much time trapped in a metal tube, hurtling through the air with a person who is possibly out to murder her. Ground transportation is safer, more controllable.”

“Right,” John said. “You know, you two think alike. You and her.”

Sherlock made a little muttering noise. The silence fell between the two of them again, and John considered that the next nine hours were about to feel exceptionally long.

“It’s odd,” he said. “She hasn’t withdrawn any money from our accounts.”

Sherlock made another little noise that John couldn’t quite decipher.

“I thought it might give us a clue,” John said. “You know, track her purchases. See where she is.” He glanced at Sherlock’s intentionally placid face. “I guess she’s a bit too clever for that.” He frowned. “Not sure how she’s getting around, then. She hasn’t withdrawn any money at all. None.”

“John,” Sherlock said carefully, “I would imagine that Mary had funds stored away for such a purpose.”

“Ah,” John said. He rubbed a hand over his face. “Right. Yeah. Of course. Funds stored away in case she needed to flee in the night. In case she needed to leave us.”

He saw Sherlock glance at him out of the corner of his eye, hands perfectly still on the wheel.

“Going into hiding,” Sherlock said, no small amount of caution in his voice, “and doing it well, isn’t an impulsive decision. It takes preparation. Planning. Maintaining connections. You cannot simply arrive at a new city and ask for false papers, a counterfeit passport, and a stack of money in the local currency. You need to be ready. You need to know where to go. You need to know who to ask, and you need to know who the next person to ask will be in case your former contact was arrested or killed.”

“Great,” John said. “So she’s been planning for this the whole time, then. The whole bloody time, she’s been ready to run.” He shook his head.

He saw Sherlock glance at him again. Then, Sherlock flipped on the blinker, slowed the car. He pulled over to the side of the road.

“What—” John looked around. “What are you doing?”

Sherlock was staring at him, his face the closest thing to sincere that John had seen since they began this trip. “Are you sure you want this, John?”

John ran his hands over his face. “Sherlock…”

“I’m not asking because…” Sherlock swallowed, “of that. I’m asking because I want _you_ to be sure that you are certain of this.”

“She’s my wife, Sherlock,” John said. “She’s my wife and she’s in danger.”

“And she has chosen to handle the situation on her own,” Sherlock said. “She has chosen to disappear, and quite expertly, I might add.”

“Yeah,” John said, hearing the bitterness in his own voice. “She is clearly skilled at running away.”

“And it is entirely possible,” Sherlock said, “that she would prefer you allow her to run.”

John blinked at Sherlock. He found that he had very little to say at the moment.

“I won’t press,” Sherlock said. “And whatever your answer is, I will trust you and will say nothing more on the matter. But please tell me honestly, John—is this what you want?”

John nodded. “Yes,” he said, his voice firm. “Yes it is.”

Sherlock nodded. For a moment, John saw a glint of moisture in his eye and wondered if he had answered a question he didn’t know he’d been asked. John opened his mouth, unsure of exactly what he was going to say, and then Sherlock’s face patched itself back up again. He turned back towards the steering wheel and ran his hands along the grooved vinyl, looking deep in thought.

“We’ll get her back to London,” Sherlock said.

“That’s the plan, yeah,” John said.

“And I’ll keep her safe.”

“Sherlock…”

“It’s the only way, John,” Sherlock said. “I can find out who’s after her. I can fix her problem. I can protect her, keep her safe from danger. Her and Rosie,” Sherlock swallowed, “and you.”

“Sherlock.” John wasn’t asking this of Sherlock, and the whole of it seemed supremely cruel. He was already asking so much of Sherlock as it was. “You absolutely do not have to—”

“I can do it, John,” he said. When he looked at John, his eyes were set, firm. All hints of moisture gone. “I promise you I will keep her safe, keep all of you safe.”

“Okay,” John said. “Okay.”

Sherlock nodded, and for a moment there was a crack in his face, a flicker of sadness slipping through. Then it was gone, and John couldn’t be certain that he hadn’t just imagined the whole thing. Sherlock flipped the blinker, peered out the window, pulled the car back onto the highway.

They drove for another hour before John had the courage to open his mouth.

“Whatever you’re about to say,” Sherlock said before John had even formed a syllable, “I can assure you that it is wholly unnecessary.”

John closed his mouth again. They rode the rest of the way in silence.

* * *

Sherlock found a pile of clothes burned in a field outside of Malschwitz. Mary was shedding her skin again.

“There’s traces of hair in here,” Sherlock said. “From her wig. She’ll have changed her hair again.”

The ashes had long since cooled. They had missed her by quite some time.

“At least we know we’re on the right path,” Sherlock said.

They drove for a while longer, until the sun had long since dipped past the horizon and even Sherlock started to look bleary. John made him stop and the two found questionable-looking accommodations for the night.

“One room?” the bored-looking attendant asked John as he checked them in. The man barely spoke English and John spoke absolutely no Polish, so they were communicating largely through gesturing and speaking loudly in a language neither one of them understood.

“Um,” John said, glancing at Sherlock. The two of them had shared a room on out-of-town cases in the past, but the connotations seemed slightly different as of late. John had absolutely no idea what the protocol was anymore.

“It makes more sense for us to share a room,” Sherlock said, once again engrossed in his mobile. “In case I receive news.” Sherlock had a few contacts in Poland he was abusing at the moment. Mycroft, apparently, was also on the case in some nebulous way.

“Um,” John said again.

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Believe it or not,” he snapped, “I have it within me to be a perfect fucking gentleman.” He snatched the key from the blinking attendant without looking and stormed off to their room.

Right then.

The universe decided to spare John for just the one moment and granted them a hotel room with two beds. John tossed their luggage on the ground and collapsed onto the bed that was physically nearest to him, barely taking the time to kick off his shoes. He prayed for an immediate, long, and dreamless sleep.

Sherlock switched off the light but seemed to have little interest in sleeping. He perched on his bed, knees up to his chest, and buried himself in his mobile, tapping and scrolling frantically. John’s body was fading on him fast, but he couldn’t help glancing up at Sherlock, watching his face in the glow of his mobile. Sherlock looked as he did when intensely focused on a case, brow furrowed, eyes intent, the whole of him like a hawk scanning a field for the tiniest bit of prey.

 _He’s beautiful like this_ , John thought. _Engrossed in a problem, using his mind to the fullest_. He shook away the thought. He rolled onto his back, closed his eyes.

“Sherlock,” he said.

“Go to sleep, John,” Sherlock said.

“I just need you to know,” John said, “that it means the world to me—the absolute world to me—that you’re doing all of this.”

There was a pause. John heard Sherlock’s fingers still on his mobile.

“Go to sleep,” Sherlock said.

John did, and nearly immediately because he was, of course, exhausted. And of course, he dreamed of Sherlock, standing on the rooftop at Barts while John looked up at him from below, pitching himself off the side of the building and falling to his death again and again and again.

* * *

One of Sherlock’s contacts remembered seeing a woman who had a Polish name and spoke the language but had just enough of an accent to be memorable. She needed to unload a stolen motorbike, the man said. He had given her the information of a person who stripped cars. She had black hair, the man said, and was wearing an oversized jacket.

John found himself a bit fixated on the knowledge that his wife, apparently, spoke Polish and knew how to drive a motorbike.

“She’s heading north,” Sherlock said. “Somewhere too cold to travel by motorbike. Somewhere you’d need a warm jacket.”

Of course Mary would pick somewhere unpleasant to run to, John thought. She couldn’t see it in herself to make this easy on him in any way, now could she?

Sherlock seemed giddy. “Do you know how many possibilities this eliminates, John? She has reduced our list of potential travel options by half.”

“Lovely,” John said. Sherlock had tried to explain his formula for calculating the probabilities of various routes Mary could have taken to John at least three times now, and John understood it less and less with each explanation. He simply decided to nod and let Sherlock do what he did best—solve puzzles.

The two of them interrogated half a dozen assistants at petrol stations before someone recalled seeing a woman who fit Mary’s description.

“A downside of paying cash,” Sherlock explained as he and John walked out of the petrol station. “Human contact. Someone is bound to remember you.”

The assistant had remembered the type of car Mary drove as well as which direction she turned when she pulled out of the station.

“A downside of being moderately attractive,” Sherlock explained. “Someone is bound to stare.”

“ _Moderately_ attractive?” John wasn’t particularly sure why he was taking offense at the moment.

Sherlock shrugged. “If you’re into that sort of thing,” he said. He glanced at John as the two slid into their car. “Which you clearly are.”

John cleared his throat. “And you,” he said, “aren’t?”

Sherlock looked puzzled. “As I’ve said before, John—the fairer sex is your department.”

“Right. Yeah.” John shook his head. Guess Mary was right about that, then. Mary, in her dubious wisdom, was right about a couple of things. John wondered if she would take any solace in that when she found out.

Sherlock started the car. “Mary is likely to be headed to Lithuania,” he said. “Vilnius, I’d say. At least for the time being. Another brief stop. Likely to assume a new identity and move on. Polish names are still present in Lithuania, but they become less frequent the further she heads north.” He tapped on his lips. “Would she have stopped for the night along the way? If so, our best bet is to try to drive straight through. Gain some time.”

“Right,” John said as they pulled onto the highway, not excited about the length of drive they had ahead of them.

The first few kilometers passed in silence.

“What about Janine?” John asked.

“Christ,” Sherlock muttered.

“I know the point of her was to get close to Magnussen, but you two seemed…” John was amazed at the sick feeling the memory brought up, even after all this time. The boy and the cat, all over again. “Chummy.”

Sherlock considered him out of the corner of his eye. “Are you jealous?” John was certain he caught Sherlock smiling.

“I’m just asking,” John said. “I mean, it’s clear that you’ve…” he gestured vaguely.

“Had sex,” Sherlock said.

“That.” John could feel his face growing hot. “And I just...I never really saw you have anyone stay over at the flat except for Janine, and I…” He shook his head. “Never mind. Forget I asked. Please.”

“With pleasure,” Sherlock said, all eyes on the road.

They drove for a while longer. The road was flat and long and seemed to point in the same direction forever. There wasn’t much to look at—just a few other cars and a line of thick trees, deep green, lining the road. Low clouds covered the entirety of the sky, giving the day a dreary feel. John wondered if his face might stop feeling so hot anytime soon.

“I am very particular,” Sherlock said.

John had been absorbed in his own thoughts and nearly jumped at Sherlock’s words. “Oh?” he asked.

“ _Very_ particular,” Sherlock said. “When I…” he mimicked John’s vague gesturing, “it is because I feel a very strong attraction, a very strong _connection,_ to the individual in question. And that, as you can imagine, does not happen very often.”

“Oh,” said John. “Oh. I…” He stared at his hands, scratching at his knuckle with a fingernail. “I suppose I ought to be flattered, then?”

John watched Sherlock’s Adam's apple bob as he swallowed. “Very,” he said.

John took over driving at the halfway point, doing his best to follow Sherlock’s directions that often came immediately before he was expected to turn. For the most part, they passed the drive in silence.

“I’m aware of my reputation,” John said. “And I know I can be...you know. But I don’t shag just anyone, Sherlock. For what it’s worth.”

Sherlock didn’t respond for a moment. John began to wonder if he had chosen not to respond at all. “I suppose I ought to be flattered as well,” Sherlock said finally. His eyes were pointed out the window.

That was the last they spoke on the matter.

They didn’t find Mary in Vilnius.

* * *

In Lithuania, Mary’s name was Laima Vaitkeliunas.

“Laima means _happiness_ in Lithuanian,” Sherlock said.

John snorted.

“This name would be common in any of the Baltic states,” Sherlock said. “She might intend to hold onto this identity, at least for the time being.”

John made some sort of grunt in response. Despite spending the nearly eleven-hour drive to Vilnius sitting on his arse, John felt just as exhausted as he did in the early days of basic training in the military. He had a few hours of broken, nightmare-filled sleep at the motel before Sherlock shook him awake and told him he arranged a meeting with someone or other Mycroft knew who might have some information for them.

“Did you sleep?” John asked Sherlock.

“Of course not,” said Sherlock.

Mycroft’s connection was decently helpful, a woman with a high enough position in the government to have access to surveillance. She was able to confirm that Mary was in the city just as early as the day before. Mary had ditched her old car for another one—likely just as stolen—and wore her hair dark and cropped around her shoulders. Sherlock was able to glean enough information to figure out where she might be heading next. John was bleary and blinking throughout the whole of the meeting, barely able to mutter out a thank-you to Mycroft’s connection before he and Sherlock got back in the bloody car.

“She’s heading to Latvia,” Sherlock said. “Daugavpils, at least for a start. She may head to Riga after that. More resources for individuals who wish to remain invisible.”

John was just grateful that Daugavpils was less than a three-hour drive away.

“She is likely to stay out of Russia,” Sherlock said. “Stick to countries within the European Union, the ones that don’t have border checks. Fewer eyes on her. Fewer opportunities for customs to notice false paperwork.”

“Right,” John said.

“The trick will be,” Sherlock said, “to get two steps ahead of her instead of one step behind. Unless she decides to stay in one spot for more than a day, we’ll need to be able to predict where she is going and beat her there.” He shook his head. “A clever opponent. Always staying just ahead of us.”

John had a blinding headache. “You’re thinking of this like a game,” he snapped. “It’s not a game, Sherlock. This is my wife. Do you understand that?”

Sherlock blinked and, for just a moment, something shifted in his face. John hadn’t realized until that moment how much of Sherlock was a mask, something firm and opaque that hid away all the bits he didn’t wish to be uncovered.

“I’m aware,” he said. “Trust me.”

John rubbed his eyes, thinking that he might owe Sherlock an apology. At this point, he figured that he owed Sherlock a _lot_ of apologies, more apologies than he could possibly ever verbalize. _Put it on my tab,_ he thought.

“I don’t even know what I’m going to say to her,” John said. “Mary. When we find her. Not a clue.”

Sherlock was silent for a moment, and John reconsidered the intelligence of even mentioning the subject to him. “What would you like her to know?” he asked.

“That I’m pissed off at her,” John muttered.

“We are driving across eastern Europe, country by country, for you to tell Mary that you are angry with her?” Sherlock asked. He looked amused at the idea.

“Not exactly,” John said.

“Then might I suggest elaborating,” Sherlock said.

“If I elaborate,” John said, “she’s likely not to want to come back to London with me.”

“So elaborate nicely,” Sherlock said.

“Right. Nicely.” John thought. He found that he didn’t have many nice things to say to Mary at the moment. “Yeah. Still no clue what to say to her.”

Sherlock sighed. “Take what you wish for her to know, all the reasons you want her back in London with you and Rosie, and distill it down to what is the most important, what is essential that she know.” He paused. “And remove the profanity.”

John chuckled. “All of it?”

“Afraid so.”

“Right. You’re probably right.”

“Why do you want her back in London with you, John?”

John glanced at Sherlock. Sherlock’s eyes were firmly planted on the road. John wagered that was by design, that Sherlock could only have this conversation with John if he didn’t look at him. John added this conversation to his list of apologies owed to Sherlock.

“We’re a family,” John said. “A couple. A unit. When one of us is in trouble, we don’t split up, we don’t run off. We stick together, we help each other.” _Like you’re doing with me,_ John thought, _despite everything._

“What else?”

“Whatever sort of danger she’s in,” John said, “the thing she thinks is too dangerous for me, she’s wrong. I can protect her. I _want_ to protect her. That’s what spouses do, right?”

“And I am available to assist in that endeavor.”

“Right,” John said, still feeling like the lowest form of human for asking Sherlock to protect his wife, his family. “I’ll tell her to come back to London with us. With me. Whatever sort of problems she’s got, there’s no good in running from them. That’s not how problems work—you can’t just run from them like some bloody coward. You face them. Especially when you’ve got people around you willing and able to fucking help you.” John saw Sherlock’s eyebrows lift. “I’ll work on softening that last bit.”

“To summarize,” Sherlock said. “You wish to tell her that the two of you—three of you—are a family and families stay together. You—and I—are willing and able to keep her safe from whatever danger in which she finds herself, but she needs to return to London with you. And…” Sherlock risked a glance at John, “you miss her? Love her?”

“Oh,” John said. “Right. That too, I suppose.” He rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Bit of an awkward piece to forget, that.”

He watched Sherlock fight a smile. “That’s why we practice, John.”

They didn’t find Mary in Daugavpils. John got in touch with Molly to beg for a few more days of childcare out of her. He wasn’t sure how many more favors he had left.

* * *

By the time they arrived in Riga, it was beyond obvious that Sherlock needed to sleep. John took over driving but Sherlock insisted on staying awake, tapping into his mobile and muttering to himself about the Scandinavian peninsula and ferries. They arrived late at night and Sherlock wanted to go make acquaintances with the local homeless population immediately, but John insisted they go to the hotel for some rest. They both, John knew, looked and felt like shit.

At the hotel, Sherlock propped himself up in a chair and attempted to look up something or other on his mobile, but he was bleary and disoriented and nodding off over his own hands. John tugged him out of the chair and over to the bed that Sherlock hadn’t even glanced at since he’d walked into the room. Sherlock made little disgruntled noises, but curled up on the bed nonetheless.

“Just resting,” Sherlock said, fighting to keep his eyes open as he tapped unproductively at his mobile. John pried the mobile from his hands and set it on the nightstand.

“Sleep, Sherlock,” he said.

Sherlock made a weak sound of protest.

John perched on the mattress just by Sherlock’s head, watching the man struggle for consciousness even as his body succumbed. Carefully, he reached out and brushed at Sherlock’s hair.

“Sleep,” he said.

He felt Sherlock relax under his hand, heard his breathing dip low. He wove his fingers through Sherlock’s curls, feeling the softness of Sherlock’s hair on his fingertips. Sherlock shook his head slowly, with great effort.

“You have to stop,” Sherlock said.

“I know,” John said, but he couldn't remove his hand from Sherlock’s hair, couldn’t stop the slow movement of his fingers in the soft curls.

“Please,” Sherlock said. “You have to stop this.” Sherlock rolled forward, grabbing at the leg John had perched on the mattress, hugging at his knee. He twisted, burying his face into the crease of John’s hip. “Please,” he said.

“I know,” John said. “I know.” But he didn’t move, and that was how the both of them fell asleep, Sherlock tucked against John’s hip, John’s hand in Sherlock’s hair.

They didn’t find Mary in Riga either.

* * *

It was either very late at night or very early in the morning, depending on how one looked at the matter. Sherlock didn’t much care how one looked at the matter. He was tired of looking. He had spent much of the trip feeling frozen, a block of ice. Being frozen took effort. Sherlock was running low on effort.

Sherlock had to start making predictions about where Mary was heading next, rather than where she just was. Otherwise, he and John would chase her around the globe for an eternity, and John had Rosie to consider. Sherlock was reasonably certain that Mary would be making a move to somewhere in Scandinavia soon. Helsinki seemed like the best option, but he couldn’t rule out Stockholm either. Finland or Sweden. The wrong choice could cost them considerable time, time they didn’t have. John needed to return to Rosie soon. Sherlock put feelers out to the few Scandinavian contacts he had, as well as several of the local ne’er-do-wells in Estonia. So far, nothing.

In an attempt to cut Mary off at the pass, Sherlock pushed the two of them to travel through Estonia nonstop. She was most likely to leave from a port out of Tallinn, so he and John stopped there for the night. Sherlock was hoping he would hear back from his contacts before making a blind guess as to whether Mary was heading to Helsinki or Stockholm, but so far his mobile had been silent.

John was exhausted, Sherlock could tell. Sherlock would have been exhausted too, if he didn’t happen to be frozen at the moment. John stripped down and fell into his bed seconds after the two arrived at the hotel, too tired to feel uncomfortable about changing in front of Sherlock, as he had been for the duration of the trip. John was currently sprawled on his back, one arm resting on his stomach and the other flung to the side, making the gentle snores of a deep sleep. Sometime earlier in the night, John had pushed the blankets half-off of his body. He wore a plain vest to sleep, old and threadbare, and Sherlock had to work very hard to not stare at the indentation of John’s chest through the worn material. The shirt slid up underneath John’s hand, revealing a small patch of smooth skin. The very tip of John’s pants were visible just above the blankets. Sherlock was not going to think about the various parts of John’s body over which he once ran his tongue.

Instead, Sherlock thought of wood frogs. He had been thinking about wood frogs a lot recently; he found them relevant. Wood frogs live in the coldest parts of North America, where temperatures can regularly reach -45-degrees Celsius in the winter. While some animals migrate or burrow, running or hiding from the death-bringing weather, wood frogs face the cold with bravery and simply freeze. They allow the ice to fill their bodies, crystals forming around their organs, underneath their skin, inside their eyes. Their heart stops beating. They stop breathing. They turn to a block of frog-shaped ice. They simply let the cold take them. They aren’t frozen all the way to death, of course; that would be an incredible evolutionary disadvantage. Their bodies keep them alive—barely so. Their livers produce just enough glucose to prevent catastrophic organ damage until it is time for them to thaw. They are functionally dead, but only enough so that the thing that ought to have killed them never actually does.

Being frozen, Sherlock found, was no simple feat. It required a substantial amount of intra-organism coordination and no small amount of focus. It was, however, incredibly effective and far preferable to the agonizing death the frigid winter otherwise promised.

At this point, Sherlock knew what could keep him frozen. Following Mary’s trail kept him frozen. Foreseeing all of her possible paths for travel, weighing out the probability and strategy of each like a magnificent game of chess kept him frozen. Piecing together the puzzle, working his way through the problem, solving the case—this all kept him frozen. It wasn’t easy, but Sherlock felt he was doing a remarkable job at it. He was a Sherlock-shaped block of ice, and he was certain to survive the winter.

Moments like these, however, Sherlock could feel himself start to thaw. He wasn’t at a dead end but he was nearing it, one or two moves away from conceding to a stalemate. He only had a few contacts in the Scandinavias, and the relationships were tenuous at best. One of his contacts said he would be in touch soon if he had any news; that was hours ago and Sherlock’s mobile was silent. There was nothing left for him to do but wait and feel the ice slowly turn to water around his organs.

He looked back at John, asleep on the bed. John let out a little snore and shifted, his head dropping to the side. His neck stretched out before Sherlock, an extended column of soft skin, the firm bone of John’s jaw protruding just above. Sherlock had his mouth on John’s neck not very long ago and yet somehow ages ago, feeling John’s stubble on his tongue and the vibrations of his moans on his lips. Sherlock couldn’t help but think that John’s outstretched arm looked welcoming, an invitation to crawl into the warmth of the bed and sleep at John’s side until the sun shone through the window. In these sorts of moments, it felt like everything was melting, and melting was no good because melting meant death.

Sherlock redirected his attention back to his mobile, tapping at the screen to see if his contact texted in the few seconds he looked away. His contact, of course, had not. Sherlock tightened his fingers around his mobile. He hated being stagnant. If he was stagnant for much longer, he would be a puddle on the floor in no time. The winter would get him.

John’s breathing picked up. He shifted again in the bed and let out a little moan. His expression twitched, frowned.

Another nightmare, then.

John had been having nightmares for the entirety of the trip—nightly, sometimes multiple times a night. Sherlock knew that John was no stranger to nightmares; he experienced them with some frequency when the two started sharing a flat years ago. However, John’s nightmares faded shortly after the two moved in together, and Sherlock only noticed restless nights on John’s part once every few months, if that. Of course, Sherlock had no data points after he returned from the dead. He couldn’t help but wonder when the frequency increased again. Something told him that this was a recent phenomenon.

John made a little noise in his sleep—a quiet, slurred sound that sounded like the word _no._ His body twitched, his hand falling off his stomach and his head flopping to the other side. Sherlock could see his eyes rolling behind closed lids, a telltale sign of active REM sleep. John’s nostrils flared—he was starting to hyperventilate.

John said that he dreamed of Sherlock, and Sherlock wondered if John was dreaming of him now, something unwanted and unpleasant that made his face contort and his limbs fight against the paralysis of sleep. Sherlock wished he could fix whatever he was doing in John’s dream that made him shout _please god no_. Unfortunately, John’s nightmares were a problem Sherlock could not solve; they existed entirely within John’s head, a place Sherlock could never live no matter how hard he tried.

John made a whimpering noise and his head rolled again. His sleeping face looked near tears, narrowed and twitching. Sherlock knew he shouldn’t move, knew he shouldn’t slip over to John or attempt to comfort him. He did anyway. He knelt next to John, in the space that separated their beds, watching John’s body twist and contort, his chest heave. He placed a hand in the center of John’s chest, feeling the furious pound of his heart through the thin fabric of his vest. Another moan escaped John’s lips and his arms jerked.

“You’re alright,” Sherlock said, rubbing at John’s chest in slow, even strokes.

He shouldn’t touch John, he knew. John didn’t want this, didn’t want Sherlock. This thing that Sherlock felt, he was alone in it; John made that perfectly clear. Acting in opposition to reality was a fool’s game, Sherlock knew, a frog refusing to freeze when the winter came. Then John gave another whimpering twitch in his sleep and obviously Sherlock would rescue John from whatever nightmare he had, no matter the cost. He moved his hand in gentle circles across John’s chest.

John’s body stilled slightly. His heart was still pounding and his chest was still heaving, but Sherlock could feel things starting to slow, dip towards homeostasis. John’s head rolled towards Sherlock. A tear slipped out of the corner of his closed eye.

Sherlock slowed his hand on John’s chest, moving it in time with the rise and fall of his breaths. John was warm underneath his fingers. “You’re alright,” he said.

John’s body settled against the mattress. His heartbeat returned to normal, his breathing deep and slow. His eyelashes fluttered once, twice, but his eyes remained closed. His face was slack, peaceful. Sherlock lifted a hand and brushed John’s hair off his forehead. John sighed in his sleep and Sherlock loved him so much it felt like a cancer in his chest, growing and gnawing and useless and killing him piece by piece. There was no point to it, no point to any of it and yet there was no way to stop it, no cure. Nothing to do but try to stay frozen and wait for the winter to end.

“You’re alright,” he said again, although he began to wonder if he was talking to himself. He tipped back away from John, leaning against the untouched bed that was meant to be his. He drew his legs to his chest and rested his forearms on his knees. John’s head was still tilted towards him and the streetlight shining through the windows illuminated his sleeping face. Sherlock was melting, his organs clammy, skin soggy, eyes leaking the remnants of ice that took so long to form.

He must have nodded off like that, with his knees drawn to his chest and his head tilted back against the side of the mattress. When he woke up, the first hints of sunlight were starting to peek through the window. The sky was a dusky blue and growing lighter.

John still lay on his back in the bed, his head tilted towards Sherlock. His eyes were open, watching him.

“Why are you helping me, Sherlock?” he asked.

Sherlock shifted. He had a terrible crick in his neck. “Because you asked me.”

“You could have said no,” John said. “You probably should have said no. Why didn’t you say no, Sherlock? Leave me to sort out my own mess?”

Sherlock jerked his head to the side and a line of cracks sounded through his bones. “A bit late for this line of questioning, isn’t it?”

John ignored him. “Why are you always saving me?” he asked. “After all this time, why are you still always saving me?”

Sherlock stretched a leg out in front of him. His hips complained. “You save me too, John.”

John sighed, ran a hand over his face. “It doesn’t feel like it,” he said. “Especially recently.”

Sherlock ruffled his fingers through his hair. He saw nothing useful in this particular conversation. His efforts were best spent plotting out Mary’s most probable next destination and doing his best to re-freeze himself.

“It’s not fair,” John said. “This isn’t fair to you. I’m not being fair to you.” John covered his face with an arm. “None of this is fair,” he said.

“Nowhere is it written that anything has to be fair, John,” Sherlock said.

John lifted his arm from his face. He tilted his head to look back at Sherlock. “I wish it were,” he said. His eyes glistened in the dim light.

Sherlock was a puddle of water. “Me too,” he said.

His mobile buzzed in his pocket. He lifted it out, read the message on the screen. His contact, finally getting back to him. About time, really.

“Finland,” Sherlock said. “We’re going to Finland.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The odds of me messing something up about the various countries mentioned in this chapter and the next are SUPER high. If you spot a mistake, please let me know! Internet research can only take you so far...
> 
> This will be more relevant in subsequent chapters, but anything negative said about any country is a reflection of the character's state of mind and not the country itself.
> 
> You are all wonderful human beings and you fill my soul with joy.  
> 
> 
> Hearts,
> 
> Arwa
> 
> (Come to the Tumblr. We have chapter update info: https://arwamachine.tumblr.com/)


	11. For I am a Rain Dog Too

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John wasn't ready to let go.

Mary’s name in Finland was Sofia Mäkinen. John could see her as a Sofia. He could see her as a Laima too, or a Lena. The name Mary was growing blurry.

Sherlock insisted that Mary wouldn’t stop for long in Helsinki and made them push forward, driving straight up the country.

“My sources say she is dressed for cold weather,” he said. “Like a fisherman. She’s headed north.”

John wondered if he ought to have dressed for cold weather as well. His jacket was warm enough, but he had a feeling it would struggle with the central-Finland temperatures.

Petrol attendants all up the highway confirmed that they had seen Mary—she was back to blond hair here, but wore it longer. Still a wig, John supposed. The time at which they reported seeing her seemed to get closer and closer. They weren’t missing her by days anymore; they seemed to be right on her tail.

Sherlock was turning into a ball of excited nerves. He tapped on the steering wheel and drove much faster than John would have liked. “We’ll find her here, John,” he said. “I can feel it.”

Still, they didn’t find her right off and stopped for the night just outside of Oulu. Sherlock took a journey around the city to buy information off the local vagrant population while John found them some food and called Molly to beg her for just another few days of childcare. If they didn’t find Mary soon, John wasn’t sure what he would do.

A downside to heading north in Finland—aside from the cold, even in the spring—was the nighttime, or rather, the lack thereof. The place seemed to be drenched in constant sunlight, and even the night was bright, the sun just barely dipping below the horizon, leaving the city in the glow of dusk until the sun rose again just a few short hours later. John supposed he would find it lovely if he wasn’t so bloody exhausted.

With Sherlock still out talking to the city’s homeless long into the evening, John set the takeout box containing Sherlock’s food on the bed that was meant to be his and crawled into his own bed, hoping for a few hours of sleep before Sherlock burst in and urged him into motion again. John felt as if he hadn’t gotten more than two consecutive hours of sleep since he left London, and the sleep he had was fitful and filled with visions of Sherlock falling from roofs, engulfed in flame, shot through the chest. If the dread he felt upon laying down to sleep wasn’t enough to keep him awake, the perpetual sunlight shining in through the window certainly was. John covered his eyes with an arm and gave a groan. It was like those early months after Rosie was born, minus the feeling of anything resembling love for the situation.

With Sherlock so convinced that they would find Mary in Oulu, John thought that he ought to figure out what the hell he was going to say to her. Despite rehearsing it with Sherlock on the way to Daugavpils, the words still felt foreign to him—somebody else’s argument.

_Come home to London with me, Mary._

_Why?_ he heard Mary’s voice ask in his head.

John’s brain fell silent.

_Because we’re married._

_And?_

_That’s what married people do. They live in the same city. The same flat, I’ve heard._

_That it, then? You just want me in London because a piece of paper says I ought to be there?_

_Not exactly._

_What then? Why should I come back to London with you?_

John exhaled against his arm. His imaginary version of Mary was a bit frustrating. _I can keep you safe._

_John, you don’t even know what the danger is. How can you keep me safe from something you don’t even know about?_

_Well. Tell me, then._

_Tell you? Just like I’ve told you all my secrets before? Just like I’ve been the pillar of honesty during every other moment in our marriage?_

_I would hope you would be slightly less of a lying bitch if it meant saving your life._

John decided that the imagined version of this conversation was going poorly. He started over.

_Come home to London with me, Mary._

_Why?_

_Because I can keep you safe. Between me and Sherlock…_

_What makes you think I’ll want to have anything to do with Sherlock?_

John could feel himself wanting to throttle Mary and she wasn’t even in the room. _Because he bloody dropped everything to hunt across eastern Europe looking for you, that’s why. Because he’s barely eaten, barely slept, traveled thousands of kilometers in a very ill-advised period of time to find the wife of a man he claims to love and I am fairly certain it’s killing him, fairly certain_ I’m _killing him and I will never, not if I live to a hundred years old, be able to repay him for what he has done for me or apologize enough for what I’ve done to him. So when I tell you…_

John pressed his eyes closed. Nope. None of that would get her back to London.

_Come home to London with me, Mary._

_Why?_

_Because…_ John’s head throbbed.

_You love me?_

_That._

_You miss me?_

_Sure._

_You want to celebrate our one-year anniversary together?_

_One year?_ John tried to do math. Their one-year anniversary _was_ coming up—when was it? John checked his mobile and pressed his eyes shut. Yesterday. Their anniversary was yesterday. The significance of the date hadn’t once crossed his mind.

_Come home to London with me, Mary, or else this will all have been for nothing._

_That’s not a very good reason._

_I know it’s not._

Sherlock arrived back at the hotel at a time that could either have been late at night or early in the morning; John couldn’t quite tell, what with the perpetual daylight. John didn’t feel as if he slept, although he must have because he had a distinct sense that time had passed.

“She’s bought food and some supplies,” Sherlock said, stripping off his jacket and button-up and lowering himself onto his bed. “Enough for a day or two. She might be planning to remain stationary for a moment. A brief moment, but a moment nonetheless.” He lifted the lid of the takeout box, poked at the food. “I’ll know more soon.” He nibbled at a piece of meat before closing the box and leaning back on the bed. He pulled out his mobile but seemed to be mostly doing so out of habit, not really looking at it. His eyes looked heavy.

“You should sleep,” John said.

Sherlock made an uninterested noise but crawled under the blankets anyway. “Did you sleep?” he asked.

“Not really,” John said. “Too bloody bright in here.”

Sherlock nodded towards the windows. “Blackout curtains,” he said. “Should help.”

John followed Sherlock’s gaze and groaned. Indeed, the thick curtains bunched at the top of the window looked as if they could cancel out all light from the dim twilight world. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” John said, lifting himself from his bed to the window. Of course a bleary, sleep-deprived Sherlock Holmes would still be more observant than he was. John tugged the curtains down over the window and the room descended into a blackness so complete it was nearly euphoric.

“Oh Christ,” John said. “That’s good.”

He knocked his knee into the bedframe as he stumbled back into bed, but he didn’t care, sinking onto the mattress and pulling the blankets up to his chin. He had never been so pleased to see nothing in all of his life. Across the room, Sherlock made a little noise that might have been _goodnight._ John only sighed in response. Something about the all-encompassing nature of the darkness was sucking the tension out of him, leaving him a pool of jelly on the bed. He felt as if he could breathe for the first time in days.

He ought to sleep, he knew. Everything in his body was pointing towards sleep. As such, John was rather surprised when he heard himself speak.

“Yesterday was my and Mary’s one year anniversary,” he said.

There was a pause, and for a moment John wondered if Sherlock fell asleep.

“I know,” Sherlock said.

Of course Sherlock would have remembered. John wasn’t sure if he was grateful to Sherlock for not saying anything or not.

“It’s not that long,” John said. “One year. It feels like it's been ages, though.”

“Time is relative,” Sherlock said.

“I suppose so,” John said, feeling himself start to fade into the darkness. It was a bit like sensory deprivation. He couldn’t see anything, and his skin almost seemed to blend into the blankets. He felt like he was floating in a sea of nothingness. It didn’t much matter if his eyes were open or closed, but he slid them closed anyway. Habit.

“I owe you an apology, John,” Sherlock said. His voice was so quiet that for a moment John wasn’t sure he heard it at all.

John tilted his head towards Sherlock. “In no version of reality do you owe me an apology, Sherlock.”

“I shouldn’t have told you,” Sherlock said. “How I felt, that is.”

“Sherlock.” John tried to look at Sherlock through the darkness. He couldn’t even see the outline of his face.

“It was wrong,” Sherlock said. “I know you don’t… I know you aren’t… I shouldn’t have told you. And I certainly shouldn’t have asked how you felt. It was selfish of me and it caused you discomfort. Forgive me, John.”

John shook his head, although he knew Sherlock couldn’t see it. Sherlock certainly wasn’t the selfish one around here. John was glad that he couldn’t see Sherlock’s face, because if it looked anything like his voice sounded it might break his heart. “There’s nothing to forgive, Sherlock,” John said, his own voice going a bit odd. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”

“I’ve done a considerable amount of wrong,” Sherlock said. “I shouldn’t have blamed you. I shouldn’t have implied that you were the one who...started everything. That wasn’t accurate.”

“It was, Sherlock,” John said. “I was the one who initiated things. That first night, the other week. That was all me.”

John could hear rustling, Sherlock shaking his head against the pillow. “I knew exactly what I was doing the other week, John. I overstepped. I knew you weren’t free and I pushed forward anyway. I should have exercised more restraint, I shouldn't have allowed any of it to go anywhere near as far as it did. I just…” Sherlock’s voice went soft, raspy, “I wanted you so badly.”

“Sherlock…”

“You have to forgive me, John,” Sherlock said. “I let what I feel get the better of me. I let it keep me from thinking rationally. I knew that I shouldn’t. I knew you didn’t feel the same. I knew that I shouldn’t proceed with my advances, and yet…”

“Sherlock,” John said, “I wanted you too.”

“I understand, John, but I let myself conflate momentary sexual arousal with emotional attachment and I drew conclusions that were unsound,” Sherlock was speaking quickly now, anxious words pouring out of him. “An abysmal lapse in logic that I swear to you will never—”

“No,” John said, “you don’t understand. I _wanted_ you, Sherlock. I wanted you just as badly, if not more. And not just then, not just that night.”

“John,” Sherlock said, “you don’t have to—”

“That night we were texting,” John said. A part of him couldn’t believe he was about to speak these words out loud, but Sherlock needed to know that it wasn’t a momentary impulse for him. At least in the darkness, he figured that Sherlock couldn’t watch his face flush. “That night I was up with Rosie at half-three in the morning and we texted after. Sherlock, just talking to you, just seeing your words on my mobile got me so bloody turned on I had to go to the bathroom and get myself off.” His cock twitched at just the memory of it all.

He heard a small noise from the other side of the room, a light puff of air. “You…” Sherlock breathed.

“Yeah,” John said, feeling his face burn even though Sherlock couldn’t see him. “That’s what I mean, Sherlock. I wanted you like mad. And I feel like an absolute bastard because the whole time we were talking I was hard as a rock and wanking like some bloody teenager and you were just—“

“I touched myself too, John,” Sherlock said quietly.

John felt a heat slide down the whole of his body. His groin pulsed, nearly moaning at the revelation. “You…” he swallowed. “You touched yourself?”

“Yes,” Sherlock said.

“And,” John felt dizzy. His body was turning to a swirling pool, pulsing heat. “You thought about…”

“You,” Sherlock said.

The air left John’s lungs. “God,” he whispered. Underneath the blankets, his cock throbbed. He couldn’t believe how hard he had gotten, and how quickly.

“And you,” Sherlock said, his voice barely sound. “You thought about…”

“You,” John said. “I thought about you fucking me, Sherlock.”

He heard Sherlock make a small sound. “And I thought about fucking you,” he said.

John made a noise he couldn’t quite control. His cock was nearly aching now. He reached underneath the blankets briefly, just to adjust himself in his pants, and his body thrummed with pleasure the second his hand brushed the taut skin. His hips wriggled, seeking out some sort of movement, friction.

“I thought about you underneath me,” Sherlock said. “Filling you up. Making you scream.” In the darkness, Sherlock’s voice was a disembodied growl, a low baritone that seemed to be coming from nowhere and everywhere, slipping into John’s ears and driving him wild with need.

“God, Sherlock.” John’s hand was still on himself, gripping at the base of his cock. It took all of his restraint not to start stroking himself, decency be damned. “I would have killed for you inside me. I had my fingers in myself, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly as good as you.”

He heard the rustle of blankets from Sherlock’s bed, a soft, rhythmic motion. “You…” Sherlock breathed. “You had your…”

“I had two fingers in me,” John said. Breathing was getting to be a challenge. He was nearly panting, but still wasn’t getting enough air. His hand ran up his cock. He didn’t seem to have very much control over it at the moment. “I was bent over the sink. Fucking myself. Wishing it was you fucking me.”

The rustling noise was louder, constant. John could hear Sherlock’s breaths shudder as he spoke. “All I wanted,” Sherlock said. “You were all I wanted.”

John’s cock was aching. He was so hard he couldn’t think straight. “Sherlock,” he whispered, “are you…?”

“Yes,” Sherlock panted, and John could hear it then, the sounds of Sherlock’s hand moving over his cock. John let out a moan and couldn’t stop himself, stroking himself with a fast, firm hand. His palm was dry and he could feel a slight tug of friction over his skin but he didn’t care; he was so turned on he would probably come all over himself in a few short moments anyway. The sound of Sherlock’s shaking breaths alone was likely to push him over the edge.

He heard the rustling still. Sherlock made a moaning noise that suggested the slowing of motion was taking all of his control. “John,” Sherlock said, his voice broken, needing. “Can I… Can I please…”

Somewhere deep, very deep in the back of John’s mind, he knew that he ought to say no. They were hours away from finding Mary—what would he tell her then, knowing what he and Sherlock had done just before? He knew that his carelessness, his ability to exercise anything close to self-control when it came to Sherlock, had already caused more than a little damage—to himself, to his relationship, and especially to Sherlock. A single step in the wrong direction was likely to destroy whatever scraps of friendship they had left. Saying no was the smart decision, the rational decision, the moral decision.

However, saying no, John knew, was never an option.

“Yes,” John whispered. “Please, Sherlock. Yes.”

John heard Sherlock’s blankets shove to the side and then Sherlock was in his bed, sliding under the covers and fitting into his arms perfectly. John still couldn’t see Sherlock in the dark but John could feel him—limbs wrapped around him, chest pressed against his, erection sliding along his hip—and then that gorgeous mouth was on his, that mouth John craved, stared at, dreamed about was moving over his and John could have sobbed with relief. Sherlock’s lips parted and his tongue grazed John’s and John found Sherlock’s face and held him close, intent to never let him go, not if he could help it. They tore at each other’s clothes, pulling vests and pants off in a disorganized fumble of limbs. John paid no attention to where his clothing flew after it left his body—for all he cared, it vanished into the dark. He found Sherlock’s mouth once more and pulled him close, pressing as much of their bare skin together as he possibly could. He wrapped a leg around Sherlock’s waist and rolled his hips. Their cocks nudged together and they both let out a moan, their kisses growing disorganized.

Sherlock pulled back slightly. John could feel his panted breath across his lips. John’s hands stayed on Sherlock’s face. He felt desperate to keep him.

“I want to see you,” Sherlock whispered. “Please, John—can I see you?”

“Yes,” John said. Sherlock sounded wrecked and John would very much like to see him too. Sherlock twisted to the side, fumbling for the lamp on the bedside table. The bulb was dim, not even enough to light the entirety of the room, but John still blinked in the sudden brightness. Then Sherlock was back in front of him. Sherlock took John’s face in his hands and pressed their foreheads together, his eyes bright and wanting, never leaving John’s.

“You’re so lovely,” Sherlock breathed.

John surged forward, catching Sherlock’s mouth in his before John could let any words spill out, because if he was lovely than Sherlock was a goddamn masterpiece, a perfect piece of art that should be hung in a museum, something so unspeakably beautiful it hurt the eyes to even gaze upon it. John felt like he could cry. He hadn’t realized how much he missed Sherlock, hadn’t identified what that aching was until just this moment, now that it was gone. It would be back, John knew, as soon as he let Sherlock go, and he figured that he best not let Sherlock go, so long as he could help it. It was in everyone’s best interests, he thought, that this moment lasted forever.

Then Sherlock moved against him and their cocks slid together and John knew that the moment would be over quickly, much too quickly. He cursed into Sherlock’s mouth, grasping Sherlock by the arse and pulling him closer because he needed more of _that_ immediately.

“Christ, Sherlock,” John heard himself gasp. “You feel so good.”

“ _We_ feel so good,” Sherlock said. His mouth was on John’s ear, teeth nipping at his earlobe, and he was right. They felt bloody fantastic together, bodies moving just so, skin lighting up against skin as if it had just been waiting for this moment. John wasn’t sure what he had been doing all these years without Sherlock pressed against him, but it was almost certainly wasted time.

Sherlock rolled on top of him and John wrapped both legs around Sherlock’s waist, urging the movements of his body closer, tighter, harder. John wasn’t sure it was enough to make either of them come but he didn’t care. He just needed Sherlock close at the moment, needed as much of Sherlock pressed against him as possible. His hands clambered across whatever part of Sherlock’s body he could reach—grasping at his shoulders, scratching down his back, gripping his arse, feeling his muscles clench as Sherlock ground into him.

Sherlock pushed himself up onto his hands, keeping a hard, pulsing rhythm with his hips. He stared down at John with a look John previously only saw reserved for particularly fascinating crimes—no-trace burglaries, indecipherable codes, locked-room murders. John could feel his chest flush just from the intensity of Sherlock’s gaze. His cock throbbed. He pressed up against Sherlock, needing more friction.

“You’re beautiful like this,” Sherlock said. He sounded nearly breathless.

John felt his flush grow. “You’re one to talk,” he said, because Sherlock looked bloody perfect on top of him, skin shimmering with sweat, lean muscles standing out on his arms and chest. John could be convinced that if he stared at Sherlock too long he’d go blind, but he couldn’t make himself look away. Sherlock leaned forward and dipped his tongue into John’s mouth in a teasing kiss, giving his hips another roll that had John’s legs shaking around him.

 _Christ_ , John thought, his mouth nipping against Sherlock’s, _everything this man does is bloody genius_.

John needed more, needed to touch Sherlock, needed to make him scream. John reached a hand between the two of them and slid his fingers along Sherlock’s cock. Sherlock let out a moan, his forehead dipping low against John’s. John ran his thumb along the head of Sherlock’s cock, slicking the tight skin in precome. He wrapped his fingers around Sherlock’s shaft, hot and pulsing, and gave his cock a firm tug. Sherlock’s arms shook and he bit at John’s lip, his hips starting to move slowly against John’s hand.

Sherlock lifted himself into kneeling, towering over John’s body and gazing down on him with a look that was half-fascinated, half-wrecked. John kept his hand on him, tightening his fingers and stroking his cock with long, twisting movements. The whole of Sherlock’s body shuddered as John’s palm moved across the head of his cock and he took John into his hand. John’s back arched at the first touch of Sherlock’s fingers against him and he sucked in air as if he were suffocating. God, how he wanted this, needed this. Sherlock’s fingers wrapped around him, squeezing him tight and moving, circling, stroking along the length of his cock and it was too good immediately. John tried to sound out Sherlock’s name but his voice seemed beyond his control at the moment, words coming out in gasps and half-syllables. John moved his hand faster on Sherlock’s cock, setting a rhythm that urged curses out of Sherlock’s mouth.

The whole of Sherlock’s body was tight and shaking. Sweat beaded on his forehead and John wanted nothing more than to taste him. Sherlock tilted forward slightly, pumping his hips into John’s fist, fucking his hand with urgency. All John could think of was the last time they were together, Sherlock kneeling over him, grasping at his thighs, his cock moving so beautifully inside him that John thought he might weep from it. The memory sent a throb of heat straight to his groin and he made a noise he didn’t quite recognize. Sherlock’s hand moved faster against him.

John could feel himself getting closer, his body trembling beneath Sherlock. He had no control over the sounds he was making and he was nearly bloody crying, high whimpers and guttural groans leaving his mouth with little warning. He was losing his rhythm on Sherlock’s cock, no longer coordinated enough to do anything besides shake underneath Sherlock’s hand and try not to wake the whole of the hotel with his screaming.

Sherlock stilled the both of their movements, a grin flickering over his lips. “Here,” he said, licking a thick line up his palm. John was midway through an embarrassing noise of protest when Sherlock nudged forward and wrapped his hands around the both of their cocks. He tightened a pulsing fist around their bases, and he set his other hand to a frantic rhythm along their shafts that had John shuddering and crying out almost immediately.

“Oh Christ, Sherlock,” John gasped between breaths, barely able to pry his gaze from the sight of their cocks pressed together. Sherlock stroked them unrelentingly and it was almost too much, too fast, too bloody perfect. John felt as if every muscle in his body was tensing, burning, convulsing. He couldn’t breathe. He wasn’t breathing. He wasn’t getting in air. He grasped at Sherlock, fingers digging into his hips. He could see Sherlock’s cock purpling against his, could feel it as his cock swelled, hard ridges protruding against his own. Sherlock was making noises above him that if John ever dreamed of he would come on the spot.

“God, Sherlock,” John said, his voice so near to begging he supposed that was what it was. “Come for me. Please Sherlock—let me see you.”

Sherlock’s body nearly bent in half and he let out a cry and then he was coming, his hand still flying across the both of them. John felt Sherlock’s cock swell and twitch against his, the heat of his ejaculate dripping down his shaft, catching in Sherlock’s fingers and slicking John’s cock and it was all too much for him. John came with a scream, Sherlock’s name caught in his throat, thrashing across the bed as Sherlock jerked every last drop out of him.

John’s head was swimming and his vision was blurred but he pushed himself up onto an elbow and reached out for Sherlock with a blind arm, catching him by the nape of the neck and pulling him down onto John, bringing their mouths together with violence. Sherlock’s hair was damp against John’s fingers and he could taste the salt of Sherlock’s sweat on his tongue and he kissed Sherlock like he was drowning and Sherlock was his only source of oxygen. There was truth to that, John supposed, because for the whole of this week, this month, this bloody _year_ , John felt as if he was bobbing in angry waves, being pulled under by an unrelenting current, and this was the first moment he felt like he could breathe properly.

Then Sherlock separated from him—just barely, no more than a few centimeters—and touched at his shoulder and sighed against his lips and suddenly John was drowning again, devoid of air. He fell back against the mattress and watched Sherlock’s smile turn sad around the edges. Sherlock tipped forward and landed on his side next to John. John rolled over, paying no heed to the mess sliding off his stomach and onto the sheets between them. He wrapped an arm around Sherlock and pulled him closer, pressing their lips together once more. He wasn’t done kissing Sherlock—not by a long shot. Sherlock tucked his hand into the small of John’s back and it was still slick with their come and John heard himself make a whimpering noise that was just beyond his control.

It was unfair. All of this was unfair.

Sherlock kissed him once more—soft, almost chaste—and it had a feeling of finality to it. One of these kisses, John knew, was to be their last. This couldn’t go on and, in fact, wouldn’t go on for very much longer. After they found Mary, it would be over. John and Mary would return to their flat in London to carry on with family life, and Sherlock would return to Baker Street to carry on being Sherlock, this time without John in tow. John felt as if someone had worked their fingers in between his ribs and pulled.

He moved forward, catching Sherlock’s lips with his own. He didn’t want their last kiss to be the last. He hadn’t been prepared. He needed warning before it was all to be over, so he could take care to remember the feel of Sherlock’s lips against his, the way his breath stuttered when John moved his tongue just so.

Sherlock sighed against him. He pulled his head back ever so slightly, just out of reach, separating from John with a nearly imperceptible whimper. He pressed a hand to John’s shoulder—a barrier. Already, it was ending.

It had to end, John knew. This thing that was happening between the two of them, it was unsustainable. It all needed to be over—immediately, if possible. In all honesty, it never should have begun. John was nearly certain that all the pulling at his ribs had cracked the whole of his chest open.

Sherlock’s eyes were closed. “I shouldn’t have…” he started.

John grabbed at Sherlock’s face. “Don’t,” he said.

“I shouldn’t have,” Sherlock said. “I just promised you that I wouldn’t, and… It was wrong of me. I shouldn’t have.”

John ran his fingers over Sherlock’s face, stroked at the corners of his lips, his jaw, his cheekbones. “Sherlock.”

Sherlock tugged at John’s hand, slid it off of his face. He squeezed it into his own, holding it tight in the space between them that seemed to be increasing in size. “My sources tell me that Mary might be laying low outside of the city,” he said. “Likely on one of the small islands just off the coast.” He opened his eyes but didn’t seem capable of making eye contact at the moment, choosing instead to stare at John’s hand, still clasped inside of his. “We’ll find her here. Soon. Then the two of you can go home together.”

John squeezed at Sherlock’s hand. His throat seemed to be on fire. “Thanks to you,” he said.

Sherlock huffed out a small laugh that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Thanks to me,” he said. He ran his thumb over John’s knuckles. John considered that after Sherlock unwrapped his fingers from John’s hand, he might never feel Sherlock’s hands on him again. He tightened his grip on Sherlock. God, he wasn’t ready to let go.

Sherlock still wasn’t meeting John’s eyes. His eyelashes seemed damp. John found that he missed Sherlock’s eyes. This was all a mess—a giant bloody mess.

“Excluding Rosie,” John said.

Sherlock glanced up at him. His eyes were wet.

“Excluding her, of course,” John continued. “Although she shouldn’t really count because it’s a completely different thing, how a parent feels for a child. And anyway, it’s like comparing apples and oranges, so…” He stopped himself. He was rambling. He closed his eyes. Took a deep breath. “Excluding Rosie,” he said, “and no one else. You.” He opened his eyes, caught Sherlock’s brilliant gaze with his own. “You are the person I love most in the world.”

Sherlock’s face fell open before him, eyes wide, lips parted. “You…?” he breathed.

John nodded. “I do.” He squeezed at Sherlock’s hand. “I do. God, Sherlock. I do. I have. Always.” He swallowed. This next bit was the painful bit. “But, Sherlock—”

“Stop,” Sherlock said, releasing John’s hand and touching his fingers to John’s lips. “Wait. Just a moment. Let me remember this. I want to keep it, just as it is.” He shut his eyes, his brow furrowed. “Just as it is before you say what you’re about to say. Please.”

The rest of John’s ribs cracked open and he sprung forward, catching Sherlock’s mouth in his and kissing him with every damned thing he had in him. Sherlock made a surprised noise and then he was kissing back, his mouth wide and desperate against John’s. John clutched Sherlock’s face in his hands and kissed him as if his life depended on it, kissed him as if it was the only thing in the world he needed, kissed him as if it was to be their last, which John supposed it was. It had to be the last, it absolutely had to. This thing they shared would ruin him, would ruin the both of them. John was worried it already had.

The urgency faded and their mouths slowed against each other. It was time. John planted one, two, three small kisses on Sherlock’s lips, those gorgeous lips. Then it was all over.

“Alright,” Sherlock said. He opened his eyes. “Alright.” He pulled back from John, lifted his hands off John’s body, leaving a trace of warmth behind. “You can say it now.”

John puffed out a breath, heavy and unsteady. His words felt nettled, pricking at his throat on the way out. “This can’t happen anymore,” John said, “You and I. It isn’t fair to Mary. It isn’t right.”

Sherlock closed his eyes, a man who chose not to stare down the firing squad after all. He nodded.

“I made a vow, Sherlock,” John said. “I made a vow to Mary. I stood before God and everyone and swore that I would stay by her side. Until death does us part.”

Sherlock nodded again. He knew. He had been there, after all, right next to John.

John’s words were tearing at his throat, his voice coming in odd and scratchy. “I can’t break that vow. No matter what I feel. I’ve been an absolute cock of a husband so far, but...it has to stop. I have to do better.”

Sherlock’s eyes remained closed. His lips were pinched between his teeth. He nodded again.

“She’s my wife, Sherlock,” John said. “She’s the mother of my child. That…” John’s eyes were burning, his vision growing a bit blurred. “That has to mean something. This can’t have all been for nothing.”

Sherlock exhaled, a wet, shaking sound. His lips twitched against his teeth. John felt as if he were breaking.

“Christ, Sherlock,” he whispered. “You have no idea how much I wish…”

“No,” Sherlock said. He opened his eyes, a shimmering blue of waters in a paradise John had only seen in photographs. “Please, John. If you have any mercy, any at all, you will not finish that sentence.”

John’s mouth remained open but his words stopped. He nodded. All he wanted in the world was to close the space between himself and Sherlock, to press his lips against Sherlock’s and kiss the shattered look off his face. However, he told himself the last kiss was the last, and it had to be, it simply had to be. If he started granting himself exceptions, he’d never stop.

Sherlock’s mouth tugged down at the corners. His face seemed to be in danger of collapsing in on itself. “Say it once more, please,” he said. “Just the once. And then never again. Never say it again.”

John forced himself to meet Sherlock’s eyes. His vision had gone a bit swimmy. “I love you,” he said. “I love you, Sherlock.”

Sherlock’s eyes slid closed. His face twitched. He nodded. “Thank you,” he said. He stayed that way—eyes closed, face at war with itself—for just a moment longer before sitting up, tucking his elbows onto his knees. He ruffled his fingers through his hair. He took several deep breaths, each growing more still, more calm with every exhale. When he raised his head, his face was a wall. Opaque. Impenetrable. He turned to look at John and the whole of him was cold, frozen.

John pushed himself up into sitting. “How do you do that?” he breathed. He felt as if each inconvenient little thing he felt was written on his face in permanent ink.

Nothing moved on Sherlock’s face. “I suppose I have to, now don’t I?”

Sherlock’s expression was unreadable. He almost looked bored. It was the expression, John realized, that he had seen on Sherlock so many times before—as the two shared a cab together, as the two crossed paths after John emerged from the shower at Baker Street, as Sherlock stood by John’s side at John’s wedding. It was a communication to the world that Sherlock was still waters, bland and uncaring. If John didn’t know any better, he would say it was genuine, that Sherlock felt nothing at all—never had, never would. Indeed, John had claimed as such many times over. But—as Sherlock so joyfully loved to point out—John was wrong. John considered that he much preferred not knowing when he was wrong.

Sherlock’s mobile buzzed. He slid off the bed, standing at the nightstand as he read the message on his screen. The dim light from the bedside lamp illuminated his lean body, dipping into the lines of tight muscles along his frame. Sherlock’s cock was still plump and pink, resting gently against his bollocks. John considered that only moments ago it was pressed against his, leaking and twitching as Sherlock’s deft hand stroked the both of them.

“Information about Mary?” John asked.

Sherlock nodded. “My sources think they know where she’s hiding out,” he said. “Stand by for more information.”

There—just left of the center of Sherlock’s chest—was the little round scar from Mary’s bullet. John felt everything in his body grow cold.

“You don’t have to protect us,” John said. “Once we get back to London, you don’t have to keep us safe.”

“Yes I do,” said Sherlock. His eyes were still glued to his mobile. He was typing rapidly.

“I can’t ask it of you,” John said. “You protecting Mary. You keeping the lot of us safe. It’s too much. It’s too much for me to ask.”

“You aren’t asking, John,” Sherlock said. “I’m choosing.”

John shook his head. “It isn’t fair,” he said. “It’s too—”

“It’s my choice,” Sherlock said. His fingers flew across his mobile.

“How?” John asked, shaking his head. His eyes were still fixed on the scar on Sherlock’s chest, evidence of the act that nearly killed him, that nearly took him from John yet again. “How can you choose this, Sherlock?”

“Because,” Sherlock said. “You chose her.” His face flickered for just one moment, the barest glimmer of emotion shining through before he closed up again. “She makes you happy,” he said. “She’s what you want. I am to see to it that you have what you want, what makes you happy.” His eyes lifted from his mobile, and it seemed as if Sherlock allowed himself to be back with John, his face open and warm. “I want you to be happy. Always.”

“Sherlock...” John started, but he wasn’t sure how he would finish that particular sentiment. He had whole sentences swirling around in his head, fragments of ideas about the injustice of Sherlock doing nothing but giving and giving and giving to John while all he did was take and take and take, the utter lack of fairness regarding all John asked of Sherlock as of late, and the somewhat unbelievable notion that _Sherlock_ made John happy, happier than he had been in the whole of his life. John didn’t feel like he could say any of that out loud, and his mind suggested a compromise of lifting himself off the bed, walking over to Sherlock, wrapping his arms around him, and never letting go.

Sherlock’s mobile chimed. John watched Sherlock’s eyes dart across the screen. His expression remained unchanged as he took in the information.

“I have the location of the island she’s staying on,” Sherlock said. “She’s staying in a cottage a few kilometers from the pier. We’ll need to catch a ferry out there. The next one leaves in...” He tapped away at his mobile. “Twenty-five minutes.” Sherlock glanced at John, his eyes darting down his body. He gestured with his chin. “Trousers on. You’re about to see your wife.”

* * *

The ferry ride to the island Mary chose to hide out on was about thirty minutes, and Sherlock and John passed most of the time in silence. It was properly late now—nearly two in the morning—but still the night never came, the sky a dimly-lit blue. Clouds were rolling in from the west, bringing with them a biting wind that pushed against the water, making the ferry ride a bit choppier than desired. John felt bleary and disoriented, the adrenaline of finally finding Mary at war with his orgasm-slack muscles. His heavy eyes stared out the car window as the ferry moved them, looking at the bobbing waves without seeing them. The grey-blue water was close in color to the sky, giving everything a pale, somber look.

Next to him, Sherlock appeared to be in a meditative state. His face was focused and devoid of emotion. If he noticed John stealing glances at him as they rode out to the island, he didn’t let on. John had quite a lot he wished to say to Sherlock but absolutely no ability to put any of it into words. It was just as well—nothing John could say to Sherlock would change a thing about the situation or make it any more bearable for all involved. Silence, it seemed, was the best option.

John had a sick feeling in his gut that was directed entirely at himself.

The ferry pulled up to the pier and Sherlock started the car, pulling out of the ferry and onto the mainland. The island was small—no more than 50 kilometers across, Sherlock told him—and the road was dirt-lined and narrow, surrounded by towering trees on both sides. The trees blotted out the light from the sky, casting shadows across the road and bringing about the closest thing to nighttime John had seen since they arrived. The sudden near-darkness cast an ominous feel to the whole situation, and John ran a hand over the gun tucked neatly in his pocket.

He wasn’t sure if he ought to bring the gun. He debated bringing it along on the trip to begin with—bringing a gun on a trip to reunite with one’s wife conveyed a questionable message. Still, Mary said she was in danger, and danger seemed to necessitate a weapon. When he tucked it into his coat before leaving the hotel tonight, Sherlock only nodded at him, a grim approval.

Sherlock turned down an even narrower road and the tree line grew thicker, the terrain bumpier. John hadn’t seen many other houses along this way—the place Mary was hiding out in was quite secluded, indeed. Sherlock said that only a few hundred people lived on this island; Mary seemed to be going for solitude.

Sherlock pulled the car to the side of the road and switched off the engine.

“Best to maintain the element of surprise,” he said. “It is unclear how a former assassin in hiding might react if an unfamiliar car pulls up in front of her house.”

John nodded, exiting the car. “How far away?”

“Not very,” Sherlock said. “About a kilometer. Best be quiet.”

John did his best to mask the crunch of dirt beneath his feet as they walked along the road. The trees started thinning as they neared the coast, and the forest no longer shielded them from the harsh wind coming in from the ocean. John’s coat wasn’t nearly warm enough—he flipped up his collar and buried his hands in his pockets. Sherlock bundled himself into his coat as well, his collar nearly obscuring his face. His cheeks and nose glowed pink from the cold and his curls were tangled from the wind. John could feel his own hair whipping about, his ears nearly going numb. Mary had sure picked a frigid little island to hide out on, he thought.

The trees were thin by the time the cottage was visible, and Sherlock pressed a finger to his lips to remind John to keep quiet. The place was perched near the ocean, just atop a slight hill that dipped towards the water. It was a small building—no more than two rooms, John estimated—and looked as if it had stood there for years, the pale blue paint of the wood exterior nearly faded entirely off, the roof a little slumped in areas. All of the lights were off and the shades were drawn—Mary seemed to be asleep.

Sherlock crouched low and angled them so they approached the cottage to the side, as out of view from the windows as possible. He tugged John around to the side of the house, finding an area without windows and pressing his back to it, listening. John did the same. The place seemed still, no noise coming from inside. Sherlock slunk around the back of the cottage, ducking underneath windows, getting the lay of the land.

 _What’s the plan?_ John mouthed.

Sherlock grabbed at John’s jacket, pulling him close.

“Go around to the back,” he whispered, his lips grazing against John’s ear as he spoke. “Stand just to the side of the rear window. Be sure you cannot be seen. Stay vigilant. Watch for her.”

“And what’ll you do?” John whispered. He wasn’t particularly sure why reuniting with Mary required so much sneaking around.

Sherlock grinned. “Knock.” With that, he slunk away, disappearing around the side of the cottage.

John moved to the back of the cottage, pressing himself flat against the wall to the left of the rear window, as instructed. He could just see inside the window, not enough to make out anything from the inside of the house but enough to tell that the lights were off.

He heard a knocking from the other side of the cottage. The front door.

“ _Mary._ ”

Ah. So Sherlock’s plan was to literally knock on the front door, then. John wondered what he was doing hiding out behind the house.

More knocking. “ _Mary Watson._ ”

John thought he heard movement from inside, but it was too faint for him to be sure. He turned his head, pressing his ear closer to the wall.

“ _Mary, we’ve come to fetch you. If you could be so kind as to let us in, it’s really quite cold out here._ ”

John was nearly certain he heard movement now. Something sliding, then footsteps. He thought for a moment that the footsteps were walking towards the door. Mary recognized Sherlock’s voice, then, and would respond in some manner. John almost pushed himself away from the wall to join Sherlock at the front door when he heard the footsteps retreat, padding closer to him and away from the front door.

A light click. Another sliding noise. The windowsill nudged open.

The window opened halfway and a small duffel bag was tossed outside. Then John saw a leg—Mary’s leg—swing through the opening.

Mary was escaping out the back.

John felt everything inside him clench. He thought his teeth might shatter.

Mary slipped out the window with barely a sound. She was fully dressed, heavy winter coat on, trainers on her feet. Ready to run. She bent to pick up her duffel.

John stepped in front of her. Mary snapped up to standing, her eyes wide.

John forced himself to smile. “Hi Mary,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is another chapter where the likelihood of me getting something wrong about Finland is high. I tried my best, but if I made a mistake, I am so sorry! Also, I reiterate that anything negative said about Finland is a reflection of John's state of mind and not Finland itself.
> 
> Again, you are all awesome people and I am so thrilled you are even reading this thing that I can barely express it.
> 
> Hearts,
> 
> Arwa
> 
> (boom: https://arwamachine.tumblr.com/)


	12. The Rose of Tralee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Come home to London with me, Mary._
> 
> That was what John had prepared to say.

“What the hell are you two doing here?” Mary asked as soon as they were all inside. “And how did you find me?”

“It’s good to see you too,” John said, shaking the cold-numbness out of his fingers. “It’s been a bit, hasn’t it?”

The inside of Mary’s cottage wasn’t much to write home about. John was right—it wasn’t more than just the two rooms. They stood in what seemed to be the larger of the rooms, a combination kitchen and sitting room that didn’t house much more than a rickety table, an antique cooker, and a few mismatched chairs. John guessed that the sleeping quarters and the loo were in the second room, separated by nothing more than a threadbare curtain in the doorway.

After being greeted at the front door by a reluctant Mary and a sour-faced John, Sherlock flashed a perfunctory smile at Mary as he strode into the cottage and immediately took to pacing around the perimeter of the main room, examining each crevice of the place and peering out the windows.

“Seriously,” Mary said. “What the hell are you two doing? I specifically told you not to come looking for me. I specifically said to let me handle this on my own.” A look of worry flashed over her face. “And who is looking after Rosie?”

Mary looked like hell, although John supposed he wasn’t looking like the best version of himself either. Her eyes were heavy and weary, bearing the weight of too many nights with not enough sleep. Her skin was pale and lines stood out on her face; she looked older, haggard. It had only been a week, but John thought she might have lost weight, her clothes seeming to hang off her body more than usual. She had cut her hair short—likely to fit easier into an endless supply of wigs—and it clung to her scalp, only accentuating her skeletal shape. Despite her appearance, she had a sharpness to her, an edge that threatened to draw blood if handled incorrectly. John considered that this must be what Mary looked like during her past life—alert, sharp, dangerous.

“Molly is looking after Rosie,” John said, choosing to only answer the second part of Mary’s question. “Mrs. Hudson is helping as well. We owe them favors.” He scratched at his head. “A lot of favors.”

“Maybe, then, if you had listened to me and not left London to look for me…” She shook her head, exasperated. “How did you _find_ me? All of my moves were random, the roll of a—”

“ _Please,_ ” Sherlock said, turning briefly from the window he was peering out. “After eliminating what is either impossible or infeasible one is only left with a finite number of options for travel. Not to mention, you would have had to be in touch with people to obtain the necessary paperwork and modes of transportation. And people talk. Quite a lot, as it turns out.” He turned back to the window, pushing aside the curtain with a finger. “Finding you was really quite simple.”

“I wouldn’t exactly say _simple_ ,” John said, thinking back on the exhausting week-and-a-half the two shared.

“Alright,” Mary said. “So you found me. And apparently it was a walk in the park.”

“Again,” John started, “it wasn’t—”

“So what now?” Mary asked. “You’ve come all this way. You’ve found me, despite my explicit instructions not to. You’re here. What now?”

John froze. It was a valid question, one to which he swore he used to have an answer.

“Yes, John,” Sherlock said, sliding the curtain back over the window and stepping to the side. “Although I am reasonably certain we haven’t been followed, I would prefer that we not stay in any one place for an extended period of time, so long as we can help it. As such, it is best if you say what you have to say so that we can get on with it.” His face was a blank slate, devoid of emotion. John thought of empty vaults once more, but that wasn’t quite correct, now was it? It was rather the opposite—the emptiness of Sherlock’s expression only served to hide the fathoms that existed just below the surface.

“I—” John had lines here. He was sure of it. They seemed, at the moment, to have fallen out of his head entirely.

Sherlock gestured to John, _whenever you’re ready._

John tried his best to remember his lines. He practiced them today, just a few hours ago. He practiced what he was to say to Mary once he found her. He practiced them while lying in bed, trying and failing to sleep. He practiced them in the very bed in which Sherlock joined him later, where everything felt right and wonderful for all too brief of a moment before John cocked everything up again. He had lines. He knew it.

He turned back to Mary, who was looking at him expectantly.

_Come home to London with me, Mary._

That was his line. That was what he had prepared to say. That was what he wanted to communicate, distilled down to what was important, what he wanted Mary to know. Sherlock had helped him come up with his lines, despite everything. Sherlock was helping him, despite everything. Sherlock loved him, despite everything, and John loved him back, furiously.

John swallowed.

_Come home to London with me, Mary._

“Sherlock is right,” Mary said. “We really shouldn’t all stay in one place for too long. It’s too dangerous. If my contacts talked to you two, there’s no telling who else they talked to.”

John pressed his eyes closed. His brain didn’t seem to be working quite right. It didn’t seem to be able to find language. It had forgotten how to turn thoughts into noise. It was simple, what he had to say—seven words, none of them particularly complicated. Still, he couldn’t quite figure out how to make his mouth say them.

_Come home to London with me, Mary._

Sherlock stepped closer, tucking his head low to speak quietly to John. “John, if I may again make note of the limited time we ought to spend in this house all together, especially considering I’ve not had the time to do a proper security sweep, and urge you to perhaps…”

“Yeah,” John said, his tone a bit harsher than he wished. “Yeah. I know.”

Sherlock’s face didn’t register John’s snapped response. He took a step back, hands in his pockets.

It was time, John knew. He needed to say the words. He needed to bring Mary back to London so the three of them—he, Mary, and Rosie—could be a family like they were meant to. They would keep Mary safe in London—Sherlock would keep her safe in London—and everything could be as planned, he and Mary living out their life together. Just as Sherlock said, it was what John had chosen. It wasn’t, however, what he wanted. And it certainly wasn’t what made him happy.

_Come home to London with me, Mary._

“John?” Mary asked.

John’s fingernails dug into his hands. He bit at his cheek. His brain was screaming at him, but he willed it quiet. He had lines, or at least he used to.

It was time.

John stepped forward. He felt oddly as if he were stepping into battle—shoulders square, body a tense line. His hands were fists at his sides, clutching onto nothing as if he could physically prevent himself from speaking. Mary’s cool eyes stared back at him, her face placid. Waiting.

John opened his mouth.

Then it happened.

In retrospect, he remembered the sound. Three little beeps, a tiny electronic noise that would have gone completely unnoticed were the room not so quiet. In the moment, John barely had time to register it. His brain, sluggish from sleep deprivation and haphazardly sorting through words, had barely enough time to work its way around the little beeps and suggest to his body that some sort of danger might be approaching.

In the moment, it was Sherlock who alerted him to this fact.

“ _Get down,_ ” Sherlock shouted.

John saw Mary’s face recognize the noise. Her eyes went wide, her face tightening and paling. He dove for her, trying to push her down, away from whatever was about to happen. She scrambled out of his grasp, darting to the other side of the room before he even understood she was gone.

He heard Sherlock shouting something, saw a blur out of the corner of his eye that was Sherlock in motion, his coat a whirl behind him.

Then the explosion came and everything went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a short chapter, this one. Sorry! The next one will be much longer - look for it next weekend!
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading! Your comments and kudos and recs make me so happy I don't know what to do with myself.
> 
> Hearts,
> 
> Arwa
> 
> Boom: https://arwamachine.tumblr.com/


	13. We’ve Always Been Out of Our Minds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Mary’s tiny cottage, on some freezing corner of an island off the coast of Finland, explosives were detonating.

John first met Mary on her second day of work at the surgery. The previous receptionist, Alice, retired to the countryside to be closer to her grandchildren or to raise terriers or something like that. John wasn’t sure. John hadn’t gotten to know Alice particularly well, and he hadn’t planned on getting to know Mary particularly well either. It had taken months, but the steady stream of pity he received after Sherlock’s death declined and his reputation as an irritable bastard who had no interest in talking to anybody finally stuck. He was left blessedly alone, which was rather how he wished to spend the remainder of his time on this earth.

Mary knocked on his office door, disturbing him from his between-patients activity of staring off into space.

“I’m the new receptionist,” she said, offering out a hand. “Mary Morstan.”

He shook it, and it took him an embarrassingly long amount of time to remember that he ought to say his name too. “Doctor Watson,” he said. “John.”

Mary smiled. “They tell me you’re the grumpy doctor,” she said.

John thought about laughing and very nearly did. “Did they, now?”

Mary nodded. “Every practice has one,” she said. “And the consensus here is it's you.”

“Can’t argue with the consensus,” John said, and he didn’t. He agreed with it, actually. He was fully aware that he had been insufferable since Sherlock died. He didn’t seem to have very much control over it. In an odd, nonsensical way, it felt as if a part of him died as well, the part that was responsible for being happy. “Best to steer clear, I’d say.”

“I’ll take it under advisement,” Mary said.

The next day, she popped by his office to ask where the pens were. She lingered in the doorway longer than needed, asking questions about pens. John tried his hand at a joke. She laughed. The following day, she snickered with him after a particularly neurotic patient refused to leave the surgery.

On Friday, Mary asked him out for a drink. He declined.

She started knocking on his door to tell him when patients arrived instead of using the phone system. The action initially frustrated him, but he grew used to her presence. It was nice to see a smiling face in between the coughs and runny noses and inflamed genitals. Once, she brought him a sandwich after noticing him eating from the same sad pack of biscuits for lunch three days in a row. He picked the pickles off the sandwich and she ate them.

She asked him out for a drink again. He declined.

After a while, she mentioned Sherlock. “The nurses told me you lost someone close to you,” she said. “Said he killed himself in front of you.”

John felt his jaw clench. He blinked back the stinging in his eyes. “Yep,” he said.

“That must’ve been awful,” Mary said. She put a hand on his forearm.

He stared at her hand. He realized that it was the first he had been touched aside from a patient shaking his hand in quite some time. “Yep,” he said.

“If you ever want to talk about it,” Mary said slowly. “I’ve been told I’m a good listener.”

John nodded. He categorically did _not_ want to talk about it. He could feel Mary’s eyes boring a hole into the side of his face.

Mary seemed comfortable in the silence. She squeezed at his arm. He heard her shift—about to get up and leave, he wagered. He almost outlasted her.

“I keep thinking he can’t be dead,” John said, the words escaping him before he realized he was talking. “I keep thinking it has to be a trick, that I’ll turn the corner one day and he’ll just be there in that ridiculous coat of his and he’ll start prattling on about some scheme that’s bloody lost on me and we’ll be off again, on an adventure.”

Mary rubbed at his forearm.

“But that’s not how it works, is it?” John said. “I saw him fall, I saw him…” The words stuck in his throat and he nearly choked on them. “People don’t just come back from the dead.”

“Typically not,” Mary said.

“Not even Sherlock,” John said. He wiped at his eyes with the back of a hand, the one not pinned down by Mary’s grip.

“That would be some trick,” Mary said.

John looked at her then, allowed himself to actually see the blue of her eyes for once. She had lovely eyes, he thought. They boasted a promise of kindness, happiness.

“I miss him like hell,” John said.

Mary smiled at him, and it seemed to match her eyes. “Of course you do,” she said.

She asked him out for a drink again. He accepted.

* * * 

John had only known Sherlock for one month and the man had already left him at a crime scene six bloody times. John supposed that after one time most sane humans would have learned their lesson or perhaps taken the hint, which had John seriously doubting whether or not he was a sane human. Most of the time, it was only a small bother—he could usually hail his own cab or hop on the Tube and ride back to Baker Street or wherever the hell Sherlock was. Today, however, it was a bit more of a bother. Sherlock had dragged him out to the middle of nowhere to look at tire marks on some dirt road, only to pop up from the ground with an _oh_ , jump into their idling cab, and speed away, leaving John quite literally alone.

Then it started raining.

It would have been hard enough to find a cab out there in the first place, and the rain sealed the deal entirely. John had a nice long walk in the rain until he found a bus stop, and then a nice long wait in the rain until the bus arrived, much later than the timetables promised. By the time John arrived back at Baker Street, the sun had long since set and John was drenched, freezing, and pissed off.

Sherlock was staring at a series of maps he pinned to the wall when John trudged up the stairs into the flat. “ _There_ you are,” Sherlock said. “I need you to go to Barts and—” he turned, his brow furrowing as he laid eyes on John. “You’re wet.”

“Yeah,” John snapped. “You left me at a crime scene in the middle of bloody nowhere. No cabs. No bus stops anywhere near. In the bloody rain.”

Sherlock glanced out the window. “It’s raining?”

“Jesus Christ, Sherlock,” John growled. He peeled his sopping jacket off himself and hung it on a hook by the door, where it proceeded to drip onto the floor. “Do you just forget I’m there until you need me?”

Sherlock scrutinized the situation. “You’re angry,” he said.

“ _Yes I’m bloody angry_ ,” John shouted. “You bloody left me at a bloody crime scene in the bloody rain, you inconsiderate git.”

“In my defense,” Sherlock said. “It wasn’t raining when I left.”

John waved his arms at nothing. “Not the bloody point.”

Sherlock looked as if he was thinking very hard about what to say, weighing options. “I’m sorry,” he said. He said it like an experiment, testing it out.

“No you’re not,” John said. He shook his head. “I don’t know what I’m even doing here, Sherlock. I follow you around like a damn puppy, you do nothing but belittle every contribution I try to make and then just leave whenever you don’t need anything from me anymore, which is a _lot_ , by the way.”

Sherlock shook his head. “That’s not—”

“Sod it,” John said. “I’m too bloody cold for this.” He stomped up the stairs to his room. His skin was pruning under his wet clothes and he thought he might never get warm. He could use a shower, but the idea of getting even wetter was off-putting. In his room, he peeled his frigid clothes off his body, throwing them in a pile in the corner. He rubbed his hands on his arms, took several deep breaths.

When he emerged from his room, dressed in dry clothes and feeling infinitesimally warmer, there was a towel—neat and folded—sitting just outside his door. Against all of his control, John felt the corner of his mouth tug into a smile. By all accounts it was nothing, and yet this towel was somehow the kindest thing Sherlock had ever done.

John descended the stairs, rubbing the towel through his damp hair. Sherlock stood by the window, plucking absently at the strings of his violin.

“I made tea,” Sherlock said.

John felt as if he had stumbled into an episode of the Twilight Zone.

“Ta,” he said, disoriented.

He poured himself a cuppa and felt the warmth seep into his body. He walked back into the sitting room.

“Right,” he said. “What do you need at Barts, then?”

* * *

“You should just move in here,” Mary said one day.

John lay on Mary’s bed, naked and sticky and still somewhat dazed, staring at the ceiling. Mary just returned from the loo and slipped on an oversized shirt. She sat on the edge of the bed.

“You sleep over half the week anyway,” she said. “It’s not that far from the surgery. And besides,” she shot him a sympathetic smile. “Your flat is depressing.”

She was right on all counts. He was sleeping over frequently. Her flat was a convenient distance from the surgery. And his flat _was_ depressing, just as depressing as the bed-sit he had when he first returned to London, if not more so. However, John figured that he could make any flat depressing at the moment. It was like a superpower that nobody wanted or needed. He had moved virtually none of his things out of Baker Street and purchased little aside from a few items of clothing and toiletries. He essentially lived in an empty room. Hence, sleeping over at Mary’s frequently.

“Isn’t it soon?” he asked. They had only been together a few months. But then, he agreed to move in with Sherlock after knowing him for only a day. In comparison, this seemed a snail’s pace. That said, Mary was no Sherlock.

Mary shrugged. “ _Too soon_ never bothered me.”

“Isn’t that the sort of thing for couples who are…” John searched for a proper word. He didn’t quite find one. “Serious?”

Mary leaned back on the pillows. “I suppose so,” she said. “Are we serious?”

He tilted his head back to look at her. “Did you ask me to move in just so you could find out if we’re serious?”

Mary smiled. “That depends on your answer.”

John chuckled and Mary’s smile widened. Yes, John liked Mary’s smile. Mary’s smile, it seemed, made John smile. In the time since Sherlock died, Mary had been the one thing to actually make John smile. He was even happy sometimes, which was utterly astounding. His reputation as the grumpy doctor at the surgery was starting to suffer. It was likely, he thought, that he could love Mary’s smile. He wondered if he already did.

“Yeah,” John said, turning his head back towards the ceiling. “I suppose we’re serious.”

“Well,” Mary said. “You should probably move in, then.”

So John did.

* * *

“You’re around a lot more frequently,” Sherlock said one evening, apropos of nothing.

John didn’t look up from the novel he was reading. “I live here,” he said. “Have for several months now. Did you delete that?”

“No,” Sherlock said, sitting down across from John in his chair. “You used to leave in the evenings sometimes. Off to spend time with that…” he waved a dismissive hand, “doctor.”

“Sarah,” John said. “And we broke up.”

“Oh,” Sherlock said.

“About three weeks ago.”

“Oh.”

There was silence. John turned a page.

“This is where,” John said, “most people would say _I’m sorry._ ”

“Why would I be sorry?” Sherlock asked. “ _I_ didn’t break up with you.”

“No,” John said. “Sorry for me. That I was dumped.”

“Oh,” Sherlock said. “I’m not sorry about that either.”

John couldn’t help the little smile that flickered across his face. “Of course you aren’t,” he said. “Although you should probably be a little sorry. You certainly make it difficult to keep a girlfriend.”

“I fail to see how your lack of ability to sustain a romantic relationship has anything to do with me.” Sherlock said.

“It’s the little things,” John said, turning another page. “Keeping me out all night. Expecting me to be at your constant beck and call. Exposing my girlfriends to mortal peril. Those sorts of things.”

“You volunteer for those activities, John,” Sherlock said. “I’m not your keeper.”

“We agree on that last bit,” John said. He closed his book, tapped at the cover. “It’s not all you, though. Not even mostly you, really. Sarah and I weren’t right.” He shook his head. “Definitely shouldn’t have gone to New Zealand with her, that’s for damn sure.”

“ _I_ could have told you that, John.”

John chuckled. “Probably so.” He glanced up just in time to catch the corners of Sherlock’s lips twitching upward. “Are you smiling?” he asked.

Sherlock frowned. “Of course not.”

“You were smiling,” John said. “You were smiling at my breakup. You’re _happy_ about it, aren’t you? You bastard. Happy about my heartache.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Come now, John,” he said. “Sarah was dull and worthless. You were already tired of her by the time she had the good sense to put the thing out of its misery. You’ll be much happier without.” He averted his gaze slightly. “It is nonsensical for you to be with someone dull and ordinary, John. Not you.”

John shook his head. Despite everything, he was smiling now too. “I think,” he said, “that is somehow one of the nicest things you’ve said to me.”

Sherlock made a little noise. He pulled his mobile from his pocket and stared at it.

“Actually,” John said, “I’m fairly certain it was _the_ nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Sherlock pretended not to hear. He made a show of tapping away at his phone.

“It was practically a compliment,” John said.

“Well,” Sherlock said. “Don’t get used to it.”

* * *

John took Mary to Sherlock’s gravesite. It was a fairly big deal—John hadn’t been back himself since Sherlock’s funeral. He couldn’t bear the sight of it, the slick granite slab boasting the name of a man who should never be stuffed underground. It was time, he figured, for him to visit again. He and Mary had been together for some time now. He decided that he loved her. He bought a ring. He was going to propose.

He was moving the hell on.

He had told Mary quite a bit about Sherlock at this point. She knew about nearly all of their adventures, had a working understanding of Sherlock's theories of deduction, and was wholly familiar with all of Sherlock’s idiosyncrasies, both endearing and infuriating.

“It almost feels like he’s still alive sometimes,” she said once.

“Yeah,” John said. “That’s the problem.”

It was cold at Sherlock’s grave, bitingly so. John zipped his jacket up to his chin and shoved his hand in his pocket. His other hand gripped Mary’s as she stood next to him, shivering. He faced the cold slab of granite that he hadn’t seen in nearly two years. He had absolutely nothing to say to it. Nothing he could say out loud, anyway.

“It’s strange,” Mary laughed. “It feels a bit like you’re introducing me to your ex-boyfriend or something.”

John made a noise that was certainly not laughter.

Mary patted the top of the grave. “It’s very nice to meet you, Sherlock.”

John kept a firm grip on Mary’s hand, pulling her back. He rather wished she wouldn’t touch the stone.

Mary bent down slightly, as if telling the gravestone something in confidence. “I promise I’ll take good care of him, Sherlock. I’ll treat him very well.” She laughed again.

John considered that he might have been squeezing her hand a little too hard.

Mary turned to him. “Lunch?”

John felt as if he might be sick, but he nodded anyway. Mary turned, tugging at his arm. John stayed where he was, eyes still fixed on the bloody tombstone. He wished for a moment alone with Sherlock, which was nonsensical because it was just a piece of granite. It meant nothing.

His jaw was tight. He had hoped that this would be cathartic, this visit. He was planning to propose to Mary soon. Next week, likely. He made dinner reservations at The Landmark and everything. He was moving on. Goddamnit, he was moving on. There was absolutely no reason for his throat to be on fire, for his eyes to be burning.

 _Stop being dead,_ John thought. _Please. For me. Stop it._

Mary tugged at his arm again. “Coming?” she asked.

John followed.

* * *

In retrospect, John knew he should have done much more.

In retrospect, he never should have fallen for Sherlock’s half-arsed ruse that Mrs. Hudson had been shot. He could have seen through that in an instant, if he had only been looking. He never should have left Sherlock’s side. And he certainly shouldn’t have said all those terrible things to him, called him a _machine_.

In retrospect, he shouldn’t have listened when Sherlock told him to stay where he was on the pavement across from the hospital. He should have rushed towards the building, found a way onto the roof, dragged Sherlock back from that ledge, wrapped his arms around him and never let go. He should have tried harder to save him, much harder.

In retrospect, he should have been more convincing over the phone. He should have begged Sherlock not to jump. He should have pleaded. He should have gotten down on his knees if needed. He should have told Sherlock that killing himself would kill John too, that just watching Sherlock on that ledge was killing him. He should have told Sherlock that he suffered the first thirty-seven years of his life without him and had absolutely no intention of going back.

In retrospect, he should have sprinted forward as soon as he saw Sherlock throw the mobile to the side. He should have tried to do something, tried to catch Sherlock’s falling body, even if it meant being crushed to death himself.

In retrospect, he should have told Sherlock how he cared for him.

In retrospect, he ought to have done that a while ago.

These weren’t things that he thought about as he watched Sherlock tip off the edge of the roof, of course. These thoughts only came to him after, a long line of hindsight that kept him awake at night and colored his dreams with blood. In the moment, John could think of very little. His mind was a screaming white panic. The only word he knew was Sherlock’s name.

His therapist told him that these patterns of thinking were unhelpful and inaccurate. She told him that they were colored by hindsight bias, and he was expecting himself to have utilized knowledge he never possessed in the moment. She told him that he acted as best as he could have in the situation, given everything. She told him to forgive himself.

He told her he understood.

In retrospect, he didn’t understand a damn thing.

* * *

“Are you ever actually going to propose to me?” Mary asked. She was sitting cross-legged on their sofa, sipping at a cup of tea.

“Hmm?” John said, glancing up from his newspaper.

“Propose to me,” Mary said. “Are you ever actually going to do it?”

“Didn’t I already?” John asked. He set his newspaper on his lap. “At the restaurant?”

“No,” Mary said. “You were about to. You were partway through a little speech you hadn’t practiced when the man of the hour showed up. You never quite got to the proposal bit after all that.”

John pointed to her hand. “You’ve got the ring on.”

“Right,” Mary said. “But I’d rather like to get the question too. You know, the actual one.”

“Okay,” John said. He supposed she was right. “Will you marry me?”

Mary laughed. “That was bloody awful,” she said. “You can do better than that.”

“Okay,” John said. He set his paper on the sofa. He slid down to one knee, facing Mary. He supposed he ought to do this properly. “Mary—”

Mary set her cup on the coffee table. She held out a hand. “Wait. Before you do all that...”

“Please don’t tell me you’re about to turn me down,” John said.

Mary smiled, a light thing. “No,” she said. “It’s just...Sherlock.”

John’s head dropped. “Christ,” he muttered.

“You and Sherlock seem to have a…” she searched for the right word, “connection. It predates the two of us. I know how devastated you were when he had you think he was dead. I can tell how much he means to you. And John—” she waited until John lifted his eyes towards hers, “I can tell how much you mean to him.”

John chuckled. “Well,” he said, “it’s Sherlock. So adjust your expectations on that bit.”

“I don’t think I have to,” Mary said. “And I’m not worried. I just need to ask you, before this goes any further, if you have room in your life for the both of us. For both me and Sherlock.”

“Mary,” John said, shifting slightly on his knee, “I shouldn’t have to explain this to you, but you know that there is not and never was anything going on between myself and—”

“At ease, soldier,” Mary said. “That’s not what I’m asking. I’m simply asking if you have room in your heart for two,” she smirked, “or will one of us need to pack our things?”

John considered Sherlock’s presence in his life, the way he took up John’s thoughts and dreams and happiness even during the two years John thought Sherlock was dead. He considered his past girlfriends, angry and resentful, claiming that John would never care for them as much as he did for Sherlock. He considered how he was never more than momentarily hurt by any of those accusations, largely because he had Baker Street to return to after it was all over. He considered Mary may have a point.

 _No_ , he thought. _I’ve moved on_.

“I’ve got plenty of room,” he said, “for the both of you.”

“Alright,” Mary smiled. “Get on with it, then.”

And she said yes.

* * *

In the final moments before the bomb in the tube compartment was meant to go off—the one that bloody Sherlock brought them out to find with no backup, the one that bloody Sherlock didn’t know how to switch off—John figured that everything was alright in the end. It certainly was much earlier than he’d expected to go, but considering the bullet in Afghanistan nearly took him out years ago it would seem that everything afterwards could be considered bonus time. You can only get so much bonus time, John supposed.

There may have been some time for him to run a few minutes ago, but John wasn’t going to do that. He certainly wasn’t going to leave Sherlock alone here, waiting to be blown to bits by himself. John being blown to bits wasn’t ideal either, but he supposed it was alright in the end.

It was alright in the end because, if he was being honest with himself, this wasn’t a half-bad way to go. Off on some adventure. Trying to save the city, do something worthwhile for a change. With Sherlock. That last bit seemed particularly important. John figured that if he could pick a way to die, any way to die at all, he would say it didn’t really matter, so long as it was by Sherlock’s side. In that sense, John figured that being blown to bits by a bomb today was the perfect way to die. He closed his eyes.

Sherlock started laughing.

* * *

“Shit,” John said, checking his mobile as the cab dropped him and Sherlock off at Baker Street. “Mary’s been waiting for us at the flat for an hour.”

“Surely she’ll understand that you were unavoidably detained,” Sherlock said. “Quite literally.”

 _Quite_ _literally_ , indeed. The two had just returned from chasing after some robbers they managed to catch mid-burglary. The robbers had not reacted well. There had been a scuffle, followed by a very minor hostage situation. It had been a bit of a longer afternoon than John anticipated. He felt wonderful.

“She isn’t going to like _that,_ ” John said, looking down at his scratched and bleeding knuckles.

“Neither will your officiant,” Sherlock said, unlocking the door to 221b. He glanced back at John’s blank face. “You’re meeting with your officiant this afternoon, remember?”

John had not, in fact, remembered. “ _Shit,_ ” he said. Nothing like showing up bruised and bloody to a meeting to make one’s officiant nice and confident about the happy couple.

“My recommendations are to keep the profanity to a minimum,” Sherlock said. “I hear the clergy frown on that sort of thing.”

Upstairs in the flat, Mary was staring at the wall Sherlock had littered with details about the upcoming wedding—seating charts and guest lists and menus and what looked to be the medical histories of the wedding party.

“I can see why you do this,” Mary said, pointing at the wall. “It helps to visualize.”

“It’s a _lot_ ,” said John, because it was. It took up nearly the entirety of the wall at this point. John felt odd about something involving him containing so much information that it took up an entire wall.

“Weddings are a lot,” Sherlock said, walking to the wall and beginning to tug off some blueprint sketches of what appeared to be women’s dresses.

Mary pointed at the sketches. “Emily is still on about the cut of the dress,” she said. “All the other bridesmaids like it of course, but Emily insists—”

“I’ve talked her ‘round,” Sherlock said.

“What?” John asked.

“I’ve talked her ‘round,” Sherlock repeated. “She’ll wear the dress. And she has agreed to cease all negative comments about it from this point forward.”

Mary narrowed her eyes at him.

“Or else the address of a social media page she keeps in secret will be anonymously forwarded to her fiancé,” Sherlock said.

“Right,” Mary said. “Well. I’ve got some follow-up questions about _that_.”

“Exactly how many of our wedding guests have you personally threatened now?” John asked, pulling out a chair to take a seat at the table inexplicably cluttered with even more wedding-related papers.

Sherlock’s gaze shifted to the side. “Are you looking for an exact number, or more of an estimate?”

John sighed. By his count, the number was fairly high at this point anyway. “You know that blackmailing wedding guests into good behavior,” John said, “isn’t exactly in the job description of the best man.”

“Are you the reason why John’s terrible great-aunt has miraculously decided that she is not coming?” Mary asked.

“Possibly,” Sherlock said. “Although it has a bit more to do with her gambling debts.”

“Oh,” John said. “Well. Ta for that, I suppose.” Great-aunt Beatrice was insufferable.

Mary checked her watch and gave John a nudge. “We ought to leave in fifteen minutes or so,” she said. “The officiant.”

“I remember,” John said. He glanced at Sherlock. “Are you coming to this one too?” So far, Sherlock had been present for the vast majority of his and Mary’s wedding planning tasks. He was there when they picked out the venue, when they sampled caterers, when they chose the cardstock for the invitations, for Christ sake. Mary even said that he stopped by her dress fitting unannounced. _Talked the woman down off the cost of the dress,_ she said later. _He somehow knew the base price of every piece of fabric in the dress and calculated that the store was making some egregious profit. Saved us nearly seven hundred pounds._ As such, they weren’t exactly turning down Sherlock’s assistance, although they had certainly gotten odd looks from more than a few vendors.

Sherlock fiddled with some papers on the table.

“Mmm,” Mary said. “I’m not sure we need to be a threesome for the meeting with the officiant. He’ll probably be wanting to know about just us. Our relationship. Our plans for the future. Things like that.”

“Sherlock probably knows all that already,” John said, trying to make it sound like a joke despite the truth of the statement. “He could probably answer better than I could.” It wasn’t a good joke, and John chose to say nothing further on the subject. He found himself strangely disappointed that Sherlock wouldn’t be joining. He was still in occasional disbelief that Sherlock was back alive, even after all these months, and took whatever opportunity he could to spend time with him.

Mary’s eyes narrowed at a piece of paper on the table. She lifted it closer to her face, examining it. “Is there blood on this?” she asked.

Sherlock inspected it. “Ah,” he said. “Yes.”

Mary dropped the paper. It fluttered back to the table. “How did blood get on it?”

“Probably from this,” Sherlock said. He pushed the sleeve of his jacket to his elbow, revealing a gash on his forearm that was leaking blood through his shirt.

“Jesus _Christ_ , Sherlock,” John said, popping out of his seat to examine Sherlock’s arm. “When did this happen?”

“One of the robbers had a knife,” Sherlock said, sounding almost bored.

John sighed. This sort of thing was a bit more commonplace than he’d like. “C’mon, then.” He tugged Sherlock back towards the loo.

“Fifteen minutes,” Mary called after them.

Both Sherlock and John were well-versed in wound care. Sherlock sat down on the toilet lid and rolled up his sleeve while John retrieved his medical supplies from under the sink. He knelt between Sherlock’s knees, examining the gash on his arm.

“You maybe could have done with some stitches,” he said. “But it’s starting to clot up so I’ll go ahead and bandage it.”

“I trust your judgment, doctor,” Sherlock said with a small smile.

John wet a flannel and set to work on cleaning the wound. “You’ve got to be more careful, Sherlock,” he said. “And let me _know_ when you’re injured, for Christ sake. This could have gotten infected.”

“No need for concern,” Sherlock said. “I feel confident I can perform my best man duties with only one arm.”

John chuckled and shook his head. Now that the excess blood was coming off, the wound didn’t look so terrible after all. It was relatively shallow and blessedly far from any major veins. John felt a stab of protectiveness hit his gut; he needed Sherlock to remain in one piece for as long as he possibly could.

“Why are you doing all this, Sherlock?” John asked, eyes still on Sherlock’s arm. “Helping out so much. Not that I don’t appreciate it, it’s just… You aren’t obligated to do any of it.”

“I like weddings,” Sherlock said.

John laughed, glancing up at Sherlock. “No you don’t.”

“Okay,” Sherlock said. “I like you.”

John wasn’t particularly sure what to say to that, but luckily Sherlock continued.

“You want this,” Sherlock said, mostly to the floor. “And I want you to be happy. I’ve done enough to make you unhappy. I want to fix that.”

John stared up at Sherlock, unsure of how to respond. He _was_ happy, John thought of saying. Sherlock’s mere presence, just the simple fact that Sherlock was in his life, was enough to make John happier than he thought possible. It wasn’t necessary for Sherlock to do any of this—threaten bridesmaids or talk down shop owners or plan the entirety of John’s wedding—because all Sherlock needed to do to make John happy was to just be _Sherlock_. John realized that he had stopped cleaning Sherlock’s wound and was simply holding his arm at the moment.

“Sherlock…” John started.

Mary popped her head into the loo. “Ten minutes,” she said. “I don’t want to be late. Best not put him off, now that he’s suddenly available.”

John made a little noise of agreement. The two of them had their heart set on a particular officiant—old enough to seem wise but not too old as to be aggressively Bible-thumping. Unfortunately, he was already booked for another wedding the day John and Mary planned to get married. That is, until very recently.

“How _did_ our officiant become suddenly available?” John asked. “Did he say?”

“He didn’t,” Mary said, “but I have a few guesses.” She looked pointedly at Sherlock.

Sherlock looked at the floor.

“Sherlock?” John asked.

“I may have convinced the offending couple to make the date available,” Sherlock said.

“Sherlock,” John said.

Sherlock continued staring at the floor. “I may have convinced the offending couple to call off their wedding.”

“ _Sherlock_.”

“They were both having an affair,” Sherlock said. “It’s for the best, really.”

John laughed. He retrieved some gauze from his medical kit. “Right. Well. Thanks,” he said. “That’s another item checked off of the increasingly long list of responsibilities that don’t actually fall on the shoulders of the best man.”

“I do try my best to excel at my work, John,” Sherlock said.

“That you do,” John chuckled. He placed the gauze on Sherlock’s arm. “Hold this just there,” he instructed, fumbling for a bandage.

“Has he told you about his plans for your stag-do yet?” Mary asked.

John looked up at Sherlock. “No,” he said slowly. His stag-do was in a week, and he had heard very little about whatever it was Sherlock had planned. “Do I want to know?”

Sherlock’s eyes were fixed on the gauze he held firmly to his arm. “It’s silly,” he said.

“No it’s not,” Mary said. “It’s sweet. Tell him, Sherlock.”

“We’re going out for pints,” Sherlock said.

“Oh,” John said. “Well, that’s not—”

“—at every street we’ve found a corpse,” Sherlock blurted.

“Oh,” John said.

“See?” Mary said, grinning. “Isn’t that sweet?”

“I wouldn’t exactly call it _sweet_ ,” Sherlock grumbled.

“No,” John said. “It’s…” It _was_ sweet, in its own odd way. It was also very _Sherlock_ , but John would expect nothing less. Hell, he would _want_ nothing less. But this was unexpected. It was thoughtful—sentimental, almost. It was a celebration of sorts, a commemoration of their time together. It was Sherlock, in his own Sherlock way, telling John that the adventures they had were memorable, meaningful. “It’s nice, Sherlock.”

“Despite what my brother, the entirety of Scotland Yard, and several commenters on that website of yours might think,” Sherlock said, “I do indeed possess the capacity to be _nice_.”

“I know you do,” John said. He smiled up at Sherlock, touched in a way he didn’t quite understand. Then he realized that he was on his knees in front of the man, grinning up at him like some arsehole, still cradling his arm in both hands for absolutely no reason. He cleared his throat and looked back down at Sherlock’s arm. He peeled the wrapper off a bandage.

“Now tell him about the app,” Mary said.

Sherlock looked away again.

“What app?” John asked.

“With Molly’s help,” Sherlock said, “I have developed a foolproof algorithm that calculates our ideal alcohol consumption down to the minute.”

“Of course you did,” John said.

“It really is quite a complex series of calculations,” Sherlock said, a bit too proud of himself to be properly embarrassed. “If you’re interested.”

John smiled. “Go ahead.”

Sherlock did a crap job of hiding the smile that flickered across his face. “There are quite a lot of variables to consider,” he said. “There is family history of alcohol consumption—your side made that bit complicated, I’m afraid to report. Personal history of alcohol consumption, both longevity and frequency. Then there are the usual suspects—height, weight, body fat percentage, metabolism. You’ve lost a pound since I initially made the calculations, so they need to be tweaked a bit. No matter. Anyway, then one must control for the variables that are a bit harder to predict, such as day-of food consumption and—”

John placed the bandage on Sherlock’s arm, patting it on securely. Sherlock’s arm felt warm against his palm. He caught Mary’s gaze out of the corner of his eye. Mary was giggling. She gestured towards him with a wave— _this is what I’m talking about, John._ John grinned and looked back at Sherlock, who was carrying on about complex mathematical formulas that he planned to use to calculate the amount of time down to the second that John’s body would turn beer into urine.

 _I’ve room,_ John thought. _I’ve room in my heart for the both of them._

* * *

The drive home from the tarmac was nearly dead silent, which was perfectly fine with John. There was more than a little for John to ponder—his already dubious reconciliation with his wife, the near loss of his best friend to an exile in Eastern Europe, the apparent return of a criminal the country thought was long dead. John, however, was doing his best to avoid thinking of any of it, because as soon as he tried to sort through everything all he saw was Sherlock as the two said goodbye on the tarmac, and that image was making his insides do funny things. John had held onto Mary’s hand a little too tightly as Sherlock’s plane flew away, as if she was the lone thing tethering him to the London soil, and had dropped her hand with a quake of excitement when the plane turned itself around. Mary, thankfully, said nothing on the subject, sitting next to him in the car and allowing the silence to stretch between them.

Sherlock was still twitchy and a touch delirious from the drugs when Mycroft loaded him into his government car, off to be debriefed now that he was ostensibly a free man. Sherlock cast John a sad look as he got into the car, a look John didn’t fully understand nor did he particularly care to. For John’s part, he was free as well. Free to continue the life he had chosen for himself. Free to return home with Mary, knowing that she would be safe. All’s well that ends well.

John, however, didn’t feel particularly well at the moment.

“I kept thinking,” Mary said, her words shattering the silence. “That you were going to get on that plane with him.”

John said nothing. His eyes very purposefully remained on the road.

“Did you want to?” Mary asked. “Get on the plane with him, that is? Go off with him on whatever adventure he had planned, even if it meant the both of your deaths?”

“That wouldn’t have been very responsible of me,” John said, and they both pretended it was an answer to her question. The silence rejoined the car and they drove on, John’s hands carefully on ten and two, his eyes fixed on the road before them.

They were nearing their flat. They would be home in fifteen minutes, ready to get on with their life together. The traffic was thinner in the suburbs; John could make it home in ten if he sped up. He didn’t speed up.

“What did he say to you?” Mary asked. “While the two of you were talking?”

John cleared his throat. “That we should name our child after him.” He nodded in the direction of Mary’s noticeable belly, the baby they agreed they would name Catherine.

“Is that all?” Mary asked. She sounded as if she did not believe him.

“That’s all,” John said, although he understood Mary’s incredulity. It seemed to him as if there ought to have been more, as if there was something Sherlock ought to have told him but decided against. For John’s part, he figured there were things he ought to have said to Sherlock as well, although there seemed to be very little point to all of it.

He had spent the whole of the night before dreaming of Sherlock, and he was tired, tired, tired.

“It’s a good thing that he isn’t really leaving after all,” Mary said, her voice a caricature of cheer. “You won’t have to lose him for a second time.”

 _For a third time_ , John thought. _I nearly lost him a second time after you shot him, after he died on the operating table. I’ve nearly lost him three times now, and that is three times too many. Hell,_ once _was too many_. He, of course, did not say any of this. What he said instead was, “Right.”

They passed the next several minutes in silence.

“We can make this work,” Mary said. “You and I. Can’t we? We can get through this?”

John tightened his hands on the wheel. In truth, he had no idea how to answer her question. “Yes,” he said. “We can.” He didn’t even know if it was a lie or not.

* * *

“How about this one?” John asked. “Burglary. No sign of forced entry. Alarms never even set off. Note left on the mirror, says _your move next._ Kind of interesting, that?”

Sherlock made a mumbling noise from underneath a pile of blankets. Over time, John grew to learn that the mumbling noise meant _no_.

“Right,” John said. “Well, there’s a lot more here. We’ll find one.”

Another mumbling noise.

It was three months since Sherlock’s brief exile, and his mood had only worsened. His days seemed to be spent largely horizontal, and the question tended to be whether John would find him horizontal on the sofa or on his bed. Today, Sherlock was horizontal on his bed, buried beneath what seemed to be every blanket in the house. John propped himself on the floor, back pressed against the bedroom wall, scrolling through the website and searching desperately for a case that might make Sherlock decide to be vertical again. He had taken the day off at the surgery and swapped childcare duty with Mary, watching Rosie all morning and afternoon so Mary could take her in the evening and John could head to Baker Street. Still, John didn’t have all evening and was hoping that he might be able to pique Sherlock’s interest relatively quickly. He had been mistaken.

“Here’s one,” John said. “Little girl’s dog went missing a week ago. Her mum said he was hit by a car. She says she can still hear him barking, as if coming through the walls.” He glanced up at Sherlock. Sometimes Sherlock liked it when the request came from a child. Sherlock didn’t move. John scrolled on.

Despite Sherlock’s constant horizontal orientation, it was obvious that he wasn’t sleeping. His eyes were heavy and his face looked haggard and he had a distant manner about him, as if his brain were elsewhere. John knew that Sherlock didn’t keep regular sleeping hours—definitely not if a case was on—but this seemed different. This seemed as if Sherlock was chasing sleep with all his might, but was never quite quick enough.

John’s mobile buzzed. It was Mary. She had sent him a few texts already this evening, mostly asking what time he thought he’d be home. Thus far, he had ignored all of them. _I had Rosie from seven until three,_ he thought. _Surely you can survive with her until her bedtime._

“How about this?” John asked. He was starting to get to the old cases now, ones that probably had already solved themselves. “A woman’s husband up and vanished—just _poof_ , gone—but every now and then she’ll get texts from a blocked number—”

“Boring,” Sherlock said from under the blankets.

John’s mobile buzzed again. He flicked the message notification away, not even reading it. He was busy. He was not being passive aggressive. He was _not_ being passive aggressive.

John sighed, scrolling fruitlessly through the remainder of the messages. He closed the screen and set his mobile on the floor. His efforts appeared to be futile.

It made John ache in a way he didn’t quite understand to see Sherlock like this. He was certainly used to Sherlock’s wild fluctuation in moods—the manic energy when a case was raging, the destructive boredom when he had nothing on—but he had never seen Sherlock quite like this. He seemed to be hurting. From what, John had no idea. All he knew was that he had an uncontrollable urge to crawl in bed next to Sherlock, to wrap his arms around him and stroke his hair, to tell him that whatever had him hurting was all going to be okay.

 _Nearly_ uncontrollable.

“Am I bothering you, my being here?” John asked. He was afraid of the answer to this question, but he still needed to ask. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was making everything worse.

Sherlock made the muttering noise that meant _no._ John didn’t find it to be enough of an answer at the moment.

“I can leave,” John said. “If you’d rather be alone.”

Sherlock shifted under his blankets. The very top of his head poked out from the pile—two eyes nearly hidden by a flurry of curls. “You’re always welcome here, John,” he said.

John allowed himself a small smile. He was grateful for Sherlock’s answer, largely because he found he didn’t want to return home at the moment. Despite their attempts to give it a go, things with Mary remained uncomfortable, and Rosie coming along hadn’t changed very much about that, except now John was uncomfortable _and_ tired. Being at Baker Street only reminded John of how much his home didn’t feel like home at times. He tried not to dwell on it—that way lay madness, he knew—but the feeling didn’t dissipate.

John heard the sound of the front door flinging open, banging against the wall as if kicked open by a rather impatient foot. It slammed shut again, and heavy footsteps started up the stairs.

John furrowed his brow at Sherlock. “Client?” he asked.

Sherlock’s head ducked back under the blankets. “Not quite,” he said.

John eased himself into standing, a number of his bones lodging complaints at the amount of time he spent propped up on the floor. He hobbled down the hallway, only to find Mary bursting into the flat, loads of Rosie’s things in one arm, a sleeping Rosie in her carrier in the other.

“Mary—” John started.

“I’ve been texting,” Mary said. “Are you too busy with Sir Mopes-a-Lot to answer your bloody phone?” She shoved the carrier into his hands, jostling Rosie slightly. Rosie made a little noise, but remained blessedly asleep.

“Um. Yeah,” John said, which he figured was not wholly a lie. “I thought you said you were free to watch her while I was over here.”

“I was,” Mary said, dropping the oversized bag that contained the genuinely surprising amount of things Rosie needed to survive an evening onto the ground. “Things have changed. Have to run.” Mary seemed rushed, distracted.

“Is everything alright?” John asked, shifting Rosie’s carrier in his hands.

“Of course,” Mary said, slapping on a smile that was so fake even John could see through it. “Something came up. Book club. Completely forgot about it. I’m meant to bring the biscuits.”

John was a bit too tired and confused to recognize that it wasn’t even a very good lie.

He set Rosie’s carrier on the kitchen table, nudging aside beakers filled with god-knows-what to make space for her. “I wish you’d given me a bit of warning, Mary,” he said. “I could have been off somewhere with Sherlock.”

“Mmm,” Mary said, “but you’re not, are you? So it all worked out fine, then.” She must have seen the anger slip onto John’s face, because her look softened. She lowered her voice. “Is he still…?”

“Yep,” John said, not particularly wanting to talk about it. “Still.”

“This isn’t like him,” Mary said. “Sulking around like this for so long. What do you think this is all about?”

John glanced back towards the bedroom. Sherlock didn’t seem to be moving. “Well,” he said. “He did recently kill a man.” _For you,_ he didn’t add. “It’s possible that he needs a bit of time to recover.” His tone was a bit more curt than one might recommend, but John was too tired to care.

“John,” Mary said. She seemed exasperated, like she had told him to pick up his wet towels off the floor over a dozen times and was frankly sick of it. “I really wish you’d stop about all this.”

“About how Sherlock killed a man to protect you?” John asked, his voice a harsh whisper. “About how he nearly got himself sent off on some suicide mission over it? About how he’s only back in London by some odd stroke of luck?” He pretended to think. He was being an arse, but he didn’t seem to have much control over it at the moment. “No, I think I’ll keep on about it for a bit longer, if it’s all the same.”

Mary shook his head. “You keep blaming me,” she said, “and it’s bullshit.” She gathered up her purse, slung it over her shoulder. She started moving towards the door.

John followed, doing his best to keep quiet. “I’m not...blaming…” Even he knew it wasn’t quite true.

Mary stopped just at the top of the stairs. “He didn’t do any of that for me, you know,” Mary said, her voice a harsh whisper. “No matter what he said. Not a bit of that was for _me_ , not really. You’re not an idiot, John Watson. I know you know it too.”

“Yeah?” John hissed, stepping in closer to her so Sherlock wouldn’t overhear. “Then who exactly was it for, Mary? Because it certainly wasn’t _my_ mess he was cleaning up. I wasn’t the one who was being blackmailed over my job as a former assassin.”

Mary looked exasperated. “Okay,” she said. “So you _are_ an idiot.”

“Fine,” John said. “I’m an idiot. Doesn’t change very much about the situation, though.”

Mary sighed. She looked very, very tired. “Believe it or not,” she said. “I haven’t done any of this with the intention of making you miserable. Believe it or not, I love you and want you to be happy with me.”

John took care to breathe slowly. He could practically hear his teeth grinding together.

“And this is the part,” Mary said, “where you would say that you love me and want me to be happy too.”

John felt as if his throat were closing up. Speaking, he knew, would be the sort of thing that fixed marriages, but at the moment he found that eye contact was tricky enough. He stood in front of her, staring at the bit of wall just to the right of her ear and breathing carefully through his nose.

Mary watched him for only a moment longer, her eyes flickering with a glimmer of what might have been sadness. Then she regrouped, starting down the stairs. “I might be back late,” she called over her shoulder. With that, she was gone, slamming the door behind her harder than John thought was strictly necessary.

Like clockwork, Rosie started crying.

John pressed his eyes closed. _Right._

He scooped her out of her carrier, bouncing her in his arms. It was too late for her dinner, and she didn’t seem to need a change. No, this was simply a bothered cry—she was upset because she woke up in a strange place and was taking her frustrations out on the collective eardrums of the building.

“It’s okay, little one,” John cooed. “You’re alright. Hush now.”

Rosie—being nearly three months old and not yet having a full grasp of the English language—did not listen. She screamed louder, fat tears streaming down her cheeks. John continued cooing his nonsense words anyway, walking her around the sitting room and hoping that she wouldn’t disturb Sherlock or Mrs. Hudson or the whole of the street too terribly much.

“It appears you are back on parenting duty for the evening.”

John looked up. Sherlock stood in the doorway to the kitchen; John hadn’t even heard him leave the bedroom over Rosie’s cries. He was wearing an oversized vest and pyjama bottoms, his dressing gown open and fluttering at his sides. His hair was a right mess and it looked as if he hadn’t shaved in a few days. Still, John was tremendously happy to see him out of bed.

“It appears so,” he said. He bounced Rosie in his arms, trying to shift her mouth a bit further away from his ear, which had recently developed a slight ringing. “Sorry about this. She’s just...a bit unhappy at the moment.”

“Aren’t we all,” Sherlock said. He walked over to John and lifted Rosie out of his arms, turning her and setting her against his shoulder. She carried on screaming.

John thought to say something about how Sherlock didn’t need to worry about trying to calm Rosie, that John would do his best to get the screaming infant out of Sherlock’s flat soon, but this was the most activity he had seen out of Sherlock all evening and he didn’t want to press his luck. Instead, he watched Sherlock walk Rosie around the room, rubbing her back and seeming not to mind as she drooled onto his dressing gown. She quieted a bit as he moved her about the room, her cries becoming slightly less ear-splitting.

“If you can get her to quiet down and go to sleep,” John said, “you might just have to keep her.”

Sherlock sank down into his chair, slipping low so that his body was a gently sloping angle. He shifted Rosie off his shoulder and set her on his chest. She bunched her little legs underneath her and nestled against him, her cries dropping to whimpers. He rubbed at her back, humming lightly.

John sat down in his chair across from the two of them, watching the scene with fascination. Never in his life would he have imagined witnessing Sherlock Holmes cuddle his daughter to sleep. For a moment, he wondered if he hadn’t nodded off and was simply dreaming the whole thing.

After a few minutes, Rosie stopped crying. She nodded off, her little fist in a ball at her mouth, sleeping peacefully on Sherlock’s chest.

“You’re a bloody genius,” John whispered.

Sherlock smiled slightly. “I keep telling you, John,” he said. “One day you’ll listen.”

“Well,” John said, “I guess this means we won’t be able to find a case for tonight.”

“We’ve just solved one,” Sherlock said. “The case of the inconsolable child. Perhaps you can write it up while she sleeps.”

John chuckled. “You do realize,” he said, gesturing at the two of them, “now that she’s down, that you can’t move? You’re stuck like that for the rest of the night now.”

“I think I can manage,” Sherlock said, and for a moment it felt like old times, the two of them—three of them now, John supposed—sharing a quiet night in front of the fireplace. John felt an aching fondness for the man that seemed to want to burrow into his chest with its claws, rearranging John’s organs to make room for itself. All John found himself capable of doing at the moment was smiling at Sherlock, but all Sherlock seemed content to do was smile back. He still looked tired, but seemed peaceful for the first time in a few months.

After a while, John watched Sherlock’s head start to bob against the cushions of his chair. His eyes slid shut and his head tilted to the side and his breaths started to come low and deep. His hand still rested on Rosie’s back, keeping her pressed against the rise and fall of his chest. John wasn’t so sure how so lovely a sight could break his heart, but that seemed to be what was happening at the moment.

He pulled his mobile from his pocket, doing his best not to make any sudden noises. He tapped out a text to Mary.

_Rosie’s fast asleep. I think we’ll both just stay here for the night. See you tomorrow._

He considered, then tapped out a second text. _Enjoy your book club._

He never heard back from her.

* * *

Sherlock was inside him and it felt like coming home.

It was a mistake, John knew it was a mistake, but it didn’t feel very much like a mistake. It felt like the thing that had been missing, the piece of the puzzle that made John understand the picture. Sherlock knelt above him, grasping his thighs and moving with a slowness that made John want to scream, and John needed for this moment to never end.

Sherlock pulled John upright, shifting back onto his heels and guiding John down onto his cock. They were wrapped up against each other and John could feel Sherlock’s heart pounding through his ribcage. It felt as if it was shaking the whole of his body.

“Look at me,” Sherlock said, and John was terrified to open his eyes because he knew if he looked he’d be lost forever. He opened his eyes anyway and Sherlock’s bright gaze seemed to slide into him, seeping through his skin and filling him with warmth. The way Sherlock was looking at him, he had never seen that before—not from Sherlock, not from anybody.

John felt all the oxygen in his lungs leave him, likely never to return, because this was a mistake that was categorically not a mistake. This was the thing that would end him, the blade that would cleave his life into clean halves. Everything in him screamed to look away, that it was too much, that he’d be a lost cause within seconds, having done irreversible damage to himself. John couldn’t look away, couldn’t ever look away.

 _God,_ John thought, _I’m in love with him._

But John already knew that, didn’t he? He’d known that from the beginning, since that first day he met Sherlock, listened to him prattle off deductions in the back of a cab, watched him piss off a swarm of officers at the site of a serial murder, stood in the window of a college and shot a serial killer and then watched Sherlock from behind the police tape, knowing he would do it again a thousand times over.

He’d known it that night, the night of his stag-do. The second he pulled Sherlock’s mouth against his, felt himself in Sherlock’s arms, taken Sherlock into his body, he’d known it was all over for him. He’d forgotten—the alcohol made him forget—but it seemed Sherlock was right about memory all along. You never really forget anything, you just have to find your way back to it. Sherlock moved inside him and broke him apart with his eyes and John knew he’d never forget again.

Which, of course, was unfortunate, because John needed to forget. He shouldn’t even have known in the first place. He wasn’t meant to know—it wasn’t right. Mary was at home waiting for him and he wasn’t meant to love anyone like this except her. However, at the moment, all he could think about was Sherlock and the way those beautiful eyes were making him want to cry.

“Don’t take your eyes off me,” Sherlock said.

It was over far too fast.

* * *

In Mary’s tiny cottage, on some freezing corner of an island off the coast of Finland, explosives were detonating. The sound was so loud it was practically its own color and everything seemed to be screaming and aflame around John. There was rushing and shouting and everything was an indiscernible blur. John wasn’t even particularly sure where his body was positioned in space anymore. He may have been moving, but which parts of him were doing what was a mystery. Bits of house were tumbling down around him and John was certain they were all about to die.

Sherlock asked him once what he would say. If he was being murdered, in his last few seconds, what would he say? At the time, John had a precise answer. He used to know firsthand, after all—Afghanistan had seen to that. It seemed to be the sort of thing that, once you knew, you didn’t stop knowing. It seemed to be a permanent answer.

As such, John was a bit surprised to discover that his answer had changed. Here he was, the ceiling crashing down around him and the room overrun with white light and ear-splitting noises and something or other pushing down against his body and he was almost certainly being murdered, and all he could do was scream Sherlock’s name over and over and over.

In retrospect, that was when he knew.

In retrospect, he ought to have known long ago.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters remaining! Can you believe it? I certainly can’t.
> 
> You guys are the greatest for coming on this little journey with me. Seriously, you make my heart glow.
> 
> Hearts,
> 
> Arwa
> 
> Also this: https://arwamachine.tumblr.com/


	14. You'll Never Be Going Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John has something to say.

John’s ears were ringing and the world was black. It felt as if ash caked the entirety of his mouth and nose. He coughed, but he wasn’t sure he had any success at it because he couldn’t hear himself. He tried again, harder this time. He felt his chest rattle. He sucked in air and coughed again. It didn’t seem as if he was dead. Something heavy and warm was on top of him.

He thought he heard a muffled sound through the ringing in his ears. He tried to shift his body—carefully, experimentally—and found that he could wiggle most of his limbs. He brushed the ash out of his eyes. He caught glimmers of light through the darkness.

The thing on top of him shifted, moved. It was a person.

“Sherlock?” John called. He couldn’t tell if he actually made noise or not. He tried again, louder. “ _Sherlock_?” He found his arms, pushed himself up. There were bits of wall and ceiling all around him.

Hands on his shoulders. More muffled noises. He thought one of the noises sounded like his name. He couldn’t be sure. A figure leaned in close to him. Sherlock.

Sherlock’s face faded into focus, his eyes full of worry, his mouth moving. _John._

John pushed himself onto his knees. He grabbed at Sherlock, searching him for visible injuries. “Are you alright?” His voice was faint, a shout from a distant room.

Sherlock squatted in front of him. He nodded. His hands were on John’s face—medical, also checking him for injuries. “Are you hurt?” John could just make out Sherlock’s voice; his hearing was returning.

John shook his head. He was slightly sore, but he couldn’t feel any sharp pains or broken bones. Sherlock had a few scratches on his face, but seemed relatively intact as well. His hair and coat were dusty and white, covered in debris.

Sherlock had been the thing on top of him, John realized. When the explosion happened, Sherlock had flung himself over John, shielding him from harm with his own body. John felt something inside of himself twist.

“You’re sure you’re not hurt?” Sherlock asked. His voice was clearer now, and John could hear the concern behind his words.

“I’m fine,” John said, doing little to contain his smile. He had been certain they were all about to die, and it was unspeakably nice to be looking at Sherlock’s face once more. He started picking the debris out of Sherlock’s hair. “Christ, Sherlock,” he said. “Look at you.”

Sherlock tugged John to his feet. “Move quickly,” he said. He was wiping the concern from his face, turning himself back to a blank slate, but John could still see traces of it around the edges.

John looked around what was left of the little cottage. The explosion, it seemed, was centralized towards the sleeping quarters. That portion of the house was completely destroyed, the ceiling caved in and walls crumbled to bits. Little strips of fire dotted along spare beams, smoke pouring into the cold sky. The damage in the main room seemed to be mostly the result of being in such close proximity to the explosion in the smaller room. The floor was littered with beams of wood, bits of ceiling, and unrecognizable debris. Portions of the ceiling were caved in, as well as one far wall. The wall nearest to the front door, however, was still standing, and Sherlock dragged John to this wall, pushing him until his back was pressed flat against it. Sherlock positioned himself next to John, his head swinging around, searching for danger. He kept a hand tight on John’s forearm.

Mary was crouched just next to them, hunkered behind the kitchen table. She flipped the table to act as a shield of sorts and had produced a handgun from god-knows-where. She appeared to be unharmed. She had herself positioned on a knee, toes pointed to the ground, prepared to spring. She clutched the gun tight with both hands, aimed towards the blown-open wall, fingers pressed to the trigger. Her face looked as if it had never once held a warm, kind smile. She looked like a stranger.

“The explosives must have been rigged before Mary arrived,” Sherlock said, his voice low. “Whoever set them up must have anticipated Mary to be asleep when they detonated.”

John pressed his eyes closed. _Christ._ Pissed as he was at Mary at the moment, he did not want to think about how close she just came to being blown to pieces.

“Well,” Mary said. “I suppose I ought to be thanking the two of you for waking me up.” Her eyes were still glued to the open wall, gun pointed ahead of her.

John had just enough time to wonder if he ought to get his gun out of his jacket when the bullets started raining in.

“ _Down,_ ” Sherlock shouted, pushing John to the ground. The bullets sprayed the wall just above them and John cursed. John flopped to his belly and pulled the gun from his pocket, aiming it at the space where the wall used to be. Whoever the shooter was, John couldn’t see them.

Mary returned fire—once, twice. She ducked back behind the table. The shooter stopped.

“You get him?” John asked.

Mary shook her head.

Sherlock crouched low on the floor, moving around the periphery of the remaining wall, trying to peer out the hole in the side of the house from a different angle.

More bullets—one, two, three—flew into the house. Sherlock ducked onto the ground, covering his head. A piece of glass shattered behind John.

Mary popped up from behind the table, fired again, ducked back down. “I can’t see him,” she hissed. “Can’t tell where he’s shooting from.”

Sherlock crawled closer to the blown-open part of the cottage, hugging as close to the remaining bits of wall as he could. “I think I see him,” he whispered. “He’s using a tree for cover.”

Another smattering of bullets hit the far wall. Everybody ducked.

John started dragging himself closer to Sherlock, but Sherlock put out a hand. “Don’t,” he said. “No movements.” He glanced back at Mary. “No shooting. I want him closer. I want him to have to move closer.”

“Is that a good idea?” John hissed.

Sherlock gestured at him with a hand. “Gun,” he said.

John slid the gun towards Sherlock. He didn’t like this plan of sitting in a blown-out house, waiting for the shooter to get close enough to properly kill them. He certainly didn’t like the idea of Sherlock possibly being in the direct line of fire. John glanced around the room, looking for anything that could be a weapon. Bits of Mary’s clothes littered the floor, some of them partially on fire. Her duffel bag had torn open. The few belongings she had were scattered about the floor. He spied a water bottle, slowly leaking its contents across the floor. He raised an eyebrow at it.

“About how far away is the shooter?” he asked.

“Thirty meters,” said Sherlock.

John made a pointing motion with a flat hand, gesturing towards the back of the house. “Twelve o’clock?”

“About one o’clock, I’d say,” Sherlock said, looking suspicious.

“John…” Mary started.

John scooted forward and grabbed at a tattered piece of clothing on the ground. It was a shirt, partially on fire. He reached for the water bottle. Enough water remained at the bottom of the bottle to give the thing a bit of weight—enough to get it thirty meters, anyway.

“I would urge you,“ Sherlock whispered, “not to do anything stupid.”

John tucked the spare fabric of the shirt—the bit not on fire—into the water bottle. It wasn’t a Molotov cocktail, but the shooter didn’t need to know that.

“If I can get him away from that tree,” John said, “do you think you can hit him?

Sherlock looked unhappy. “Yes,” he said. “But—”

“Okay,” John said. “Be ready.”

“John,” Sherlock hissed, but John was already up, crouched as low as he could and darting for the open wall that used to be the sleeping quarters. He heard Sherlock curse under his breath and push himself up on his knees, aiming the gun. John approached the open wall and could see the shooter now, hunkered behind a tree. John wasn’t sure if he could perfectly hit the man with the bottle—now fairly on fire—from this distance, but the goal was really just to scare him, anyway. John hurled the bottle over his head with all his might.

Mary shouted something. Sherlock cursed again, this time louder.

The bottle sailed just to the left of the tree, but the shooter jumped out of the way anyway, darting to the right and aiming his gun directly at John. Cracking noises rang through the air as the shots fired.

The shooter’s body jerked to the side, his shoulder twisting violently. He fell to the ground, momentarily dropping his weapon. John looked back to see Sherlock on his feet, gun in hand and a sharp, determined look on his face. John glanced behind him to see three bullet holes on the wall just to his left. That, apparently, had been a close one.

The shooter flopped to the side and grabbed at his gun, but Sherlock fired another shot, spraying into the dirt just at the shooter’s side. The man scrambled to his feet, clutching his shoulder as he darted away from the house.

Sherlock took off after him, gun in hand.

“ _Sherlock,_ ” John shouted, but Sherlock was gone, disappearing just beyond the house, heading down the hill and towards the shore after the limping shooter.

John was about to run after him, but Mary rushed to his side.

“That was tremendously stupid,” she said. Her eyes scanned his body. “You’re alright?”

“Yeah,” John said, still looking to where Sherlock disappeared down the hill. “I seem to be.”

Mary flipped the safety on her gun and tucked it away in her trousers. “Thank you,” she said.

“It’s…fine,” John said. He wasn’t paying full attention. In the distance, he heard the sound of a motor crank up. More gunshots. “ _Sherlock_.” He darted out of the open half of the house, down towards the hill that led to the shore. There was a trail of blood—the shooter’s blood—that dotted down the sloping side of the hill. He faintly heard Mary calling after him.

Sherlock met him halfway up the hill, looking frustrated. He caught John by the shoulder and spun him, pushing him back towards the house. “He’s made off in a boat,” Sherlock said. “I fired at him, but he was too far away. I only got the side of the boat. No damage.” He pushed the gun back into John’s hands. John tucked it back into his coat pocket. Sherlock stopped him just before the two reached the house. He grasped John by the arms, scanning the whole of his body. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” John said. “I’m fine.”

“He shot at you,” Sherlock said. He was letting the concern show around the edges of his face again. “He could have shot you.” His eyes were still roaming John’s body, not quite trusting that John’s own assessment of his lack of injuries was accurate.

John allowed himself to step forward slightly, touching at the lapels of Sherlock’s coat with his fingers. “I’m fine, Sherlock.”

Sherlock swallowed once and then his face dissolved into blankness again. He released John’s arms. “What you did,” he said, “was stupid.” He moved back towards the house. His coat slipped from John’s fingers.

“Yeah,” John said. “Worked, though.”

“Doesn’t make it any less stupid,” Sherlock said over his shoulder.

The two stepped back through the open hole of the house. “The shooter is injured,” Sherlock said to Mary. “Shoulder. Probably not fatal, but enough to keep him away for a while.”

“That’s good, I suppose,” Mary said. “Did you get a look at him? What’s he look like?”

“Couldn’t tell,” Sherlock said. “He was in all black. Ski mask covering his face.”

“Shit,” Mary wrinkled her nose. “I was hoping to figure out who he was. Who he might be working for.” She shook her head. “How the hell are all you people finding me?”

“It would seem your skills at disappearing could stand to be improved,” Sherlock said. “And it would also seem as if your contacts are rather loose-lipped.”

Mary surveyed the wreckage of her former house. “You’re telling _me_ ,” she said.

Sherlock glanced around the house. Most of the fires had burned out, but smoke still trailed into the sky. “It would be in our best interest to limit our time in this place,” he said. “Your shooter won’t be gone forever, and it would be preferable if he doesn’t know exactly where you are. As such,” Sherlock turned towards John, a flicker of sadness flitting so quickly in his eyes that John barely had time to perceive it, “we had best move quickly. Say what you need to say, and we’ll all head back to the mainland.”

“Sherlock…” John started.

“Best get on with it,” Sherlock said. With that, he stepped away from the two of them. He seated himself on a pile of rubble, forearms resting on his knees. He turned his gaze towards the ground and didn’t move. His shoulders rose and fell with a series of deep exhales. For someone who just shot a man from thirty meters, chased him down a beach, and saved the three of their lives, John thought that Sherlock looked shattered, the worst player on a football team about to be relegated.

“Right,” John said. “Well.” He turned back towards Mary. He let out a breath. “I guess it’s good we get to do this in person, then.”

Mary sighed. Her eyes wavered between him and the ground. Her face still held traces of the unfamiliar sharpness John witnessed as she crouched behind the table with her weapon drawn, but she was starting to fade back into the Mary that John had once known—or rather, thought he knew. She allowed a bit of her exterior to crumble. She looked tired. “I imagine you’ll want an explanation,” she said.

“You imagine?” John said, eyebrows raised. “Yeah. Some sort of explanation might be nice. Anything longer than a _note_. And the truth, Mary.” He shook his head. “I’m sick to death of all your bloody lies.”

“I wanted,” Mary said, “to keep you safe. You and Rosie.”

“No,” John said. “You wanted to keep _yourself_ safe. And I think you know that.”

Mary opened her mouth. Closed it again.

“Were we ever really in danger?” John asked. “Rosie and I? Did whoever was after you actually threaten either of us?”

Mary looked away.

John chuckled, an angry noise. He shook his head. “Of course we weren’t.” It was a silly question, really.

“You could have been,” she said, her voice quiet. “They could have used the two of you to get—”

“—and if that happened,” John said, “do you not think I’d be able to handle it? I was a soldier, Mary. Sherlock is practically a one-man army. His brother is the bloody British government. Don’t you think that, between the lot of us, we’d have it handled?”

“I didn’t want to get you involved,” Mary said. “It’s not right for you to go about solving all the issues from my past. It’s not what you signed on for when you married me.”

She had a point, John had to admit, but it didn’t really matter. “You still could have talked to me, Mary,” John said. “You could have communicated with me for one second instead of lying to me at every bloody opportunity.”

“I know,” Mary said. “I just knew you would…” she let out a little laugh, gesturing with her hand, “do exactly what you’re doing. Rush out with Sherlock to save me like some bloody knight in shining armor. Risking the both of your lives over _my_ mistakes.”

“And clearly,” John said, waving an arm back towards Sherlock, “we were both willing to do that. Christ, Mary—Sherlock and I were _more_ than willing to…” he glanced back towards Sherlock and stopped. Sherlock’s head drooped low over his dangling forearms, his hunched shoulders nearly at level with his knees. His curls—still a mess and covered with debris—hung over his face, but John had the distinct notion that Sherlock wasn’t able to keep his face a blank slate anymore. He had a feeling that, if he could see the expression on Sherlock’s face, it would slice him open.

He heard Mary sigh. “I owe you an apology,” she said.

John watched Sherlock and barely registered her words. He had gotten a bit off track, he realized. He was missing the point. None of this was what he meant to say, not anymore.

“Yeah,” John said. “You do.” He turned back towards Mary, squaring his shoulders. It was time. “But I owe you an apology too.”

Mary’s brow furrowed. “No you don’t.”

John took a deep breath. “Mary—”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Mary said, “I’m the one who—”

“We never should have gotten married,” John said. He shook his head. “We never should have, Mary.”

Mary’s eyes widened. She blinked. Once. Twice. “John,” she said. “I know that I haven’t always been honest with you. I know I’ve kept things from you. I know I haven’t always been the best of wives. But that doesn’t mean—“

“I was unfaithful, Mary,” John said. The words felt like a rush of steam escaping him, a release of pressure, leaving him free to decompress. He watched Mary’s eyes widen, her mouth pop closed. “I’ve cheated. Three times. Well, technically three, but…” he grimaced, “it’s been more than that. Much more.”

Mary was blinking rather a lot now. “You…?”

“The thing is,” John said, “all this time, this time we’ve been married…” Time, time. It was time. “I’ve been in love with someone else.”

Mary’s face cleared, a calm understanding fading over her features. “Sherlock,” she said.

John nodded. He forced himself to look directly at her as he said it. “Yes,” he said. “I’m in love with Sherlock.” He didn’t dare to look back at Sherlock just then, but he heard Sherlock’s head pop up, a sharp exhale escaping from his lips.

“Right,” Mary said. She blinked and looked away briefly, her brain shifting, acclimating to the information. “And the two of you… That is…”

“Yeah,” John said. “We’ve been together. At first I told myself it was a mistake, but…” he shook his head, “it wasn’t a mistake. It was the farthest thing from a mistake. I love him, Mary. I’ve loved him for years, and that’s not the sort of thing you can just pretend doesn’t exist.” John gave a little smile, but he was sure it came out sad. “That’s not the sort of thing you can keep a marriage alive around.”

Mary shook her head. “It isn’t,” she said. She cleared her throat. “And he…” She nodded in Sherlock’s direction.

“Yeah,” John said. “He loves me too.” He felt a dopey smile flicker across his face and shook his head in disbelief. “At least, he said he did. He’d be right if he didn’t anymore, after what I put him through. But even if he doesn’t, it couldn’t stop what I feel. Nothing could. Nothing ever has.”

Mary nodded. Her gaze darted between John and Sherlock. “I see,” she said. She sounded resigned.

“So,” John said. “I’m not saying that what you did here was excusable, because it certainly wasn’t. And I’m not saying that you haven’t done plenty to fuck over our marriage, because you certainly have. But even if you hadn’t done any of those things,” John shook his head, “we never would have worked, Mary. I was never going to be entirely yours because I didn’t come to you that way.”

“No,” Mary said, a sad smile of her own flickering over her face. “You didn’t.”

“I ought to have been honest with you,” John said. “And I ought to have been honest with myself. From the start. So. Yeah. I owe you an apology.” He turned back towards Sherlock. Sherlock was still seated on the pile of debris, forearms propped on his knees, but he was staring at John intently, gobsmacked. “But not nearly as big of an apology as I owe you, Sherlock.”

Sherlock’s face was frozen. He barely even blinked.

“I have been an absolute bastard to you,” John said. “I have been demanding and unfair and unkind and an utter arsehole and you would be within your rights to never want to be in the same room as me again, let alone love me.”

Sherlock’s face still hadn’t moved. His curls fluttered lightly in the breeze drifting in from the hole in the cottage.

“I have treated you so poorly,” John said. “Not just this past week, but this past year. Since you came back from the dead. Probably even before that, too.” John scratched at his head. Breathing evenly was starting to become a challenge. “I have treated you in a way that no human ought to endure, and the fact that you are even willing to sit here and look at me is utterly astounding. You are astounding, Sherlock, and I never once should have even entertained the idea of pretending that you aren’t the most wonderful, important thing in my world because obviously you are. Of course you are. You always have been, Sherlock. Right from the start.”

Sherlock’s mouth was open. “John,” he whispered, barely more than a breath.

“I know you didn’t want me to say it again,” John said, swallowing through a lump in his throat, “but I can’t. I can’t go a life without ever saying it to you again.” John felt his voice start to fade out, but he pushed on. “I love you, Sherlock,” he said. His eyes stung. His throat burned. “I love you so much. I’ve loved you from the moment I met you. It was so large and so obvious and I must be the biggest idiot on the planet that I didn’t see it.”

A small smile flickered over Sherlock’s lips. “You can be infuriatingly oblivious at times,” he said.

John felt the sides of his mouth twitch upwards. “Yeah,” he said. “I can be.” He held Sherlock’s gaze for a moment, the two sharing light, incredulous smiles—too tentative to believe that any of this was actually happening.

John cleared his throat and turned back to Mary. The look of surprise was long gone from her face. “I’m sorry, Mary,” he said. “I really am.”

“Yeah,” Mary said. “Me too, I suppose. So.” She nodded. “You’ve made up your mind, then?”

“Yeah,” John said. “I have. And you’re going to keep running, then?”

“Yeah,” Mary said. “I am.”

“I had a feeling,” John said. “Listen. I’ll care for Rosie, don’t you worry about her. I’ll be sure that she’s safe and happy and cared for. And I’ve got plenty of help in all that. When you’re ready to come back to London,” he paused, considered, “ _if_ you’re ever ready to come back to London, we can work out some sort of custody arrangement. Okay?”

“Okay,” Mary said. Her voice sounded a bit rough. “You’ll tell her mummy loves her?”

“I’ll tell her,” John nodded. “We’ll figure it all out, Mary.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Mary said. She blinked out some of the wetness in her eyes. “I’m coming back, you know. I won’t be gone forever. I’ll be back in London. Soon. And once I get back, I’ll want to see you. I’ll want to talk about this.”

“I’m sure you will be,” John said, not particularly sure at all. “And I’m sure you’ll want to.” He gestured about the room—what was left of it, that is. “You’ll be okay here? You’ll stay safe? That man—whoever he is—is still after you, you know.”

Mary’s lips lifted in a little half-smile. “I’ll be fine, John,” she said. “I have plenty of experience in these matters.”

“Right,” John said. “Okay, then. Now,” he turned back towards Sherlock, who was still gaping at him from the pile of debris, “I am going to walk down the road we came. I am going to catch the ferry and get the hell off this icebox of an island. I am going back to the hotel and collecting my things and then I am boarding the first flight back to London I can get.” He swallowed. “I’ve demanded so much of you, Sherlock, the entire time I’ve known you. I’ve asked things of you that no person has the right to expect from another. I don’t deserve you, Sherlock. Full stop. And I certainly have no right to ask a single other thing from you. So. I’m not demanding. And I’m not expecting anything of you. But it would make me happy—happier than anything else in this world—if you would come home to London with me, Sherlock.”

Sherlock blinked. He blinked again. His mouth was still hanging open slightly. He appeared to be speechless, which John figured was a first.

John turned back to Mary. He nodded. “Goodbye, Mary.”

Mary smiled, a sad, final thing. “Goodbye, John.”

John turned. He considered whether he ought to leave using the front door or one of the many holes blown in the side of the cottage. He opted for the door. He placed his hand on the doorknob, then turned back towards Mary once more.

“Oh,” he said. He gestured back to Sherlock. “Don’t shoot him. Please.”

Mary chuckled. “I won’t.”

John glanced at Sherlock. He shrugged. “She’s got a history.”

With that, John left the little house, closing the door behind him.

He scanned the area around the cottage for the shooter, but it would appear that Sherlock was correct about the man staying away for a while. The trail of blood he left behind, pointing towards the shore, also suggested that the man wouldn’t be back anytime soon. Some good news there, John supposed.

The sky was still a twilight blue, and John could see the sun start to turn the corner at the horizon, preparing to rise again after never fully setting. The clouds were closer—there was rain in the distance, but John had a sense that he would miss it. Still, the wind ripped down the beach, tearing at John’s hair and digging into his skin. It was the kind of wind that stole into your lungs and knocked the breath out of you. John zipped his jacket up to his chin and shoved his hands into his pockets. He would be glad when he got out of the elements, away from the cold and the wind, far from murderous shooters and sudden explosives. He started down the road back towards the pier. It was a few kilometers away, but it wouldn’t take very long if he walked quickly.

“ _John._ ”

The voice lilted back to him, carried by the wind. For a moment, it almost sounded like the wind itself, and John wondered if he was going mad.

“ _John._ ” The voice was closer now, followed by footsteps crunching along the dirt of the road.

John turned to see Sherlock jogging down the path from the cottage, his coat fluttering behind him. Sherlock still looked a bit shaken, and he still had the bloody debris in his hair. John paused along the road as Sherlock caught up to him.

“Sorry,” Sherlock said, a bit out of breath. “I gave Mary the names of a few of my contacts. People with reputations of being a bit tighter-lipped than the company she apparently keeps.” Sherlock’s nose was already pink from the cold and his hair was a mess and John had never seen him look more out of sorts than he did right then.

It was adorable, John thought. Sherlock Holmes, at the moment, looked adorable. He smiled. He couldn’t help it. “Right,” he said. “Well, that’s—”

“Are you sure?” Sherlock blurted. The wind was tearing at his hair, pushing it in and out of his face in turns. “Are you sure about…” he gestured wildly—at John, at himself, at the remnants of the cottage behind him, “that?”

John stepped forward, hands still tight in his pockets. They were the safest there, he figured, where he could control them. “Of course,” he said. “Of course I’m sure.”

Sherlock shook his head. “I can’t. I can’t ask you to do that, John. I can’t ask you to sacrifice—”

“You’re not asking me anything,” John said. “And I am not making any sacrifices, not really. _That_ ,” he gestured back to the little house, “that wasn’t what I wanted, Sherlock. _That_ was the mistake. Well. Not a total mistake, I suppose—I got Rosie out of it—but…” He shook his head, refocused. “Not the point. I thought that was what I wanted, but it never was.” He stepped forward, grabbed at the lapels of Sherlock’s jacket, steadying their mad flapping in the wind. “The whole time—this whole bloody time—it was you, Sherlock. What I wanted. You.”

Sherlock allowed the smallest of smiles to flicker across his face. John looked up into Sherlock’s eyes—opening to him, shimmering with budding hope—and found himself perfectly willing to be lost.

“It’s unbelievable,” John said, “what I feel for you. Christ, you’re all I’ve dreamed about for years now. You’ve taken over the whole of my head, the whole of my life, and it’s _yours,_ Sherlock. I’m handing it over willingly. You are the best and loveliest man I’ve ever known and even now you are standing in front of me with that goddamn debris in your hair and it’s all I can do not to grab you and snog you senseless—” John shook his head. He was losing the point again. “I am the biggest bloody idiot,” he said, “that I didn’t come to my senses sooner.”

John watched Sherlock’s smile widen, set a firm footing on his face. God, John thought, he loved Sherlock’s smile.

John took a deep breath. “You have to know, Sherlock, before you decide anything—and you know better than anyone, I suppose—that I’ve got baggage. Loads of it. I’ve got an infant daughter back home and she’s brilliant and amazing but she’s a _lot,_ Sherlock. And I’ve got a fucking assassin of a wife—ex-wife, I suppose—and god knows when she’ll be back in town and I have no idea what that’ll be like but I have a feeling it won’t be pleasant. And—as I’ve already mentioned—I am the biggest bloody idiot on the planet and I can’t guarantee I’ll get any brighter overnight.”

Sherlock was still smiling down at him. He wrapped his hands around John’s wrists and squeezed gently, rubbing at the backs of John’s palms with his thumbs. The wind had turned his cheeks fully pink now, but somehow his hands still felt warm against John’s.

“So,” John said, surprising himself at the flutter of nerves flickering in his stomach, “you are under no obligation to—and honestly, with how I’ve treated you, you would be within your rights if you just walked away from me right now. But, god, Sherlock. I have loved you so much and for so long, and of course I’m sure. I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. And all I want—all I’ve ever wanted—is to be able to show you, in whatever way you’ll let me, just how bloody much you mean to me. You don’t have to. And god knows you probably shouldn’t. But, Christ, Sherlock—if you’ll have me—”

He was abruptly silenced as Sherlock took his face in his hands and brought their mouths together with such urgency that John temporarily forgot how to breathe. When he remembered again, he was gasping against Sherlock, their mouths moving desperately against each other, nipping and tasting. The wind twisted their hair in circles and into their eyes, and Sherlock’s coat flapped against John. John stepped into the thick fabric and Sherlock enveloped him, wrapping his arms around him, pulling him so close he felt as if he were stepping inside of Sherlock himself. Sherlock was warm and soft and nearly thrumming with energy, a sort of light that John only felt from him when he was investigating particularly inventive murders. When they separated, panting, the fog of their breaths turning to steam against their faces, Sherlock kept John’s face in his hands, grinning madly at him. John felt his own smile as it streaked across his face. He was fully aware that he was grinning like some sort of maniac, some lovestruck schoolboy, but he couldn’t be arsed to care at the moment.

“You’re right,” Sherlock said. He ran a thumb over John’s cheek.

“Oh?” John asked.

“You’re the biggest bloody idiot on the planet,” Sherlock said.

John laughed, a sound that pealed from his mouth and drifted off onto the wind and seemed to carry everything with it—the lies and the denial and the nightmares and the twisting in his gut and the crushing feeling in his chest and the absolute madness of doing anything else in his life when he could have been pouring his love into the man standing directly in front of him. He wrapped his fingers around the nape of Sherlock’s neck and pulled him close and laughed and laughed and Sherlock laughed too, a soft, breathy sound of sweetness and relief.

“Do you think,” John asked, “you could find it in you to love me anyway?”

“John Watson,” Sherlock said, his eyes glowing green against the pale blue of the twilight, “I will love you until the day I die.”

John never considered that the burning in his chest, his throat, his eyes, could possibly feel so wonderful. “I’ll hold you to that,” he said.

It was half-three in the morning on some god-forsaken island off the coast of central Finland. The sun hadn’t properly set and wouldn’t for another several months; it was maddeningly bright. It was one or two degrees Celsius at the most, and the temperature was dropping. Clouds were rolling in, promising nasty weather in their wake, and the wind blew as if out for vengeance. Sherlock held John’s face in his hands and kissed him with everything he had and John would have sworn, absolutely sworn, that it was paradise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one chapter left--I can't believe it! This fic has been so fun to share with you all! Thank you so much for reading and kudo-ing and commenting and all the other wonderful things that you do.
> 
> Hearts,
> 
> Arwa
> 
> And of course: https://arwamachine.tumblr.com/


	15. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was much to do.

The sun that had only recently decided it was time to peek over the horizon cast the faintest of lights through Sherlock’s bedroom window, giving the room a hazy shimmer that made everything look not quite real. There was a hint of golden-pink to the light, and when it landed on the walls, the furniture, the blankets, it changed the colors, making everything look new and different. For a moment, Sherlock was confused by the light, the way his bedroom at Baker Street looked identical and yet transported to another dimension where everything was just a touch more beautiful. He was still skimming the line of sleep, drifting lazily between consciousness and a soft slumber. Everything seemed a bit unreal.

He blinked, his eyes warring against their sudden use. He didn’t remember falling asleep, didn’t even remember feeling sleepy, but apparently had fallen into something akin to a coma, deep and motionless, that spanned the entirety of the night. His brain was struggling to emerge from said coma, sluggishly shuffling through the data Sherlock’s tired eyes sent in and trying to make sense of it all.

He heard a soft noise—a light puff of breath—and something shifted against his chest. His blinking eyes searched for the disturbance. A sleeping John, face half-buried in his pillow, was tucked close to Sherlock, an arm flung across Sherlock’s chest—heavy, possessive. The blankets had slipped low on his body, stopping just before the swell of his arse, revealing the muscled lines of his bare back. Sherlock smiled, and his brain decided it was worth coming back online for this.

A memory drifted back—John underneath him, legs wrapped around Sherlock’s midsection, pulling him closer, sinking his teeth into Sherlock’s neck to keep himself from screaming—and Sherlock’s temporary coma made a bit more sense. The blanket hugged the curve of John’s arse, dipping into the space between his spread legs, and Sherlock was reminded that John was naked underneath the blankets. Sherlock was as well—their respective comas set in far too quickly to clean off or retrieve any sort of clothing. When John awoke, he would insist that they change the sheets. Sherlock would fight him on it. John would laugh and call him _dirty man_. Sherlock would remind John that the smell of him on the blankets made him impossibly aroused. Then he would push John down onto the bed and snog him until they _really_ needed to change the sheets.

Based on the angle of the light coming through the windows, Sherlock estimated that it was about half-six in the morning. Rosie was a prompt riser; he and John had approximately thirty more minutes of rest before she came screaming back into consciousness. Rosie tended to greet the day with an enthusiasm that was largely vocal. _Hoping she’ll grow out of that,_ John once commented, apologetic. Sherlock didn’t much mind.

He rolled onto his back, craning his neck to the side to peer at the video monitor they had set up to view Rosie in her cot upstairs. She appeared to still be asleep, flat on her back in the cot, one leg kicked to the side, both arms flung over her head. Rosie was turning into the master of odd sleeping positions, once managing to heave both legs up onto the side of the cot. She stayed as such, one sock dangling half-off her foot, for hours. Sherlock and John placed a wager on how long she would go on sleeping like that. Sherlock won.

At ten months old, Rosie seemed to be growing rapidly, developing new skills every day. She began crawling a little over a month ago and had really taken to it, moving as if she knew she had a whole world to see. She was pulling herself up onto the legs of tables and chairs, and Sherlock felt certain that she would walk soon, despite what John’s baby books claimed. He was helping her with leg exercises and intended to speed the process along.

 _You know once she starts walking,_ John reminded him _, things will really get mad around here._

Mad never bothered Sherlock.

John grunted in his sleep. He shifted forward and, displeased to find that Sherlock wasn’t in the exact place he’d left him, wrapped his arm around Sherlock’s side and tugged him back to where he’d been. Sherlock allowed himself to be moved, slipping an arm around John’s back as John burrowed closer. John nestled his nose into Sherlock’s neck and sighed contentedly. Sherlock smiled and pressed a kiss into John’s hair, a right mess after the events of the previous evening. He ran his palm down John’s back. John was warm and his skin was soft against Sherlock’s hand.

“What time?” John mumbled against Sherlock’s neck. His eyes were still closed, and his voice was heavy with sleep.

“A little after half-six,” Sherlock whispered.

“About thirty minutes, then,” John said.

“Indeed,” Sherlock said, his hand moving softly against John’s back. “Go back to sleep.”

John made a little murmuring noise. His breaths were slow and heavy against Sherlock’s neck.

When they returned to London, John moved himself and Rosie directly into Baker Street, barely taking the time to gather their things from his old flat with Mary. Mrs. Hudson had been thrilled. John asked Sherlock no fewer than a half a dozen times if he was sure, reminding him that he could refuse, that introducing a baby into the flat would bring chaos and disruption, that John was more than willing to take things slowly if Sherlock wished. Sherlock, however, had never been so sure of anything in his life.

Rosie, of course, brought a new dynamic to the flat, but John was accurate about her ability to be endearing in all her demands. She adapted to her new environment quickly and took to Sherlock with a speed that seemed to astonish John. Sherlock found that he had a knack for calming Rosie when she was otherwise inconsolable, which earned him new responsibilities with her fairly quickly. He didn’t mind. He was teaching her how to walk.

Caring for a baby added new challenges to sleeping, but it certainly made sleep less elusive when the two found time. Sherlock noticed that sleeping was a much more desirable experience when he had John in his bed. They both learned the importance of keeping quiet so as not to wake Rosie, although the both of them struggled with the task from time to time. Sherlock—thus far—held the record for most egregious offense. On the night in question, Sherlock found himself on his back with John’s lips wrapped around his cock and his fingers moving inside him; John crooked his fingers forward just so and performed some complicated movement with his tongue that Sherlock didn’t fully understand and Sherlock came at a volume that earned him both a banging on the ceiling from Mrs. Hudson below and an irritated scream from Rosie above.

 _You,_ John had said to him, wiping his mouth and doing his best to mask his smile with the back of a hand, _are in big trouble._

But Sherlock certainly didn’t mind.

Mary had yet to return to London. Neither Sherlock nor John were particularly surprised. They received two parcels from her in the past six months—care packages for Rosie. Despite the tortuous route through which Mary arranged to have the parcels shipped, Sherlock was able to determine where she was fairly easily. Norway for the first package, Iceland for the second. She appeared to be moving farther away than closer.

 _Likely heading to North America,_ Sherlock said. John had nodded, his jaw tight.

Mycroft used his ample connections to access information about Mary’s activities a few months ago. Per Mycroft’s sources, Mary had managed to locate the individual who threatened her, the one who attempted to detonate her cottage in Finland and who Sherlock shot in the shoulder. The shoulder injury, apparently, made him easier to locate. According to Mycroft, the individual in question was a former associate of Mary’s from her past life. Also according to Mycroft, the individual in question had been dealt with in a fairly permanent manner.

 _If she is to return to London,_ Mycroft said, _you might expect her shortly._

As of yet, they had received no word from Mary about returning to London. Again, neither of them were surprised.

 _She’s not coming back,_ John said one afternoon. The two of them were lying on the sofa, having a rest while Rosie napped upstairs. Sherlock’s head lay in the center of John’s chest. John’s heart beat evenly against his ear.

 _She might,_ Sherlock said. He could hear the vibrations of his own voice against John’s ribcage.

 _She won’t,_ John said. He weaved his hand into Sherlock’s hair, stroking at his scalp in a manner that would put Sherlock to sleep in under five minutes. _I think this was all only ever temporary for her. One life in a series of lives she’s lived._

Sherlock lifted his head, setting his chin against John’s chest. _Are you alright_? he asked.

John smiled down at him, twisting at his curls with his fingers. _Of course I am,_ he said. _She’s made her choices. And I’ve made mine._ He tugged Sherlock up his chest, pressing their lips together. Sherlock couldn’t taste an ounce of regret on John’s tongue.

This morning, a beam of light streaked through the window, the sunlight growing confidence in the day. The light caught the dust particles floating in the air, illuminating their journey as they drifted about the room, neither rising nor falling. Sherlock considered that dust was mainly comprised of skin particles, little flecks of dead flesh, but it didn’t much bother him. Some of the skin particles in the room were John’s now, and he liked the idea of John coating the room in a fine layer of himself. As time passed, more and more of the room would be made of John, and Sherlock was just fine with that.

John’s hand wrapped around Sherlock’s shoulder blade, pulling him closer.

“I dreamed of you,” he said.

“Oh?” Sherlock said, smiling lightly against the warmth of John’s body. “Good or bad?” It didn’t happen as frequently anymore, but John still had nightmares on occasion, the ones where Sherlock fell, the ones where he was shot, the ones where he was taken from John. On those nights, Sherlock would wake to John wrapping himself around Sherlock, clutching at him with shaking arms. Sherlock would whisper to him, kiss at his forehead, pull him into his chest and hold him close until John’s breathing was slow and his heartbeat matched Sherlock’s.

John nuzzled his nose against Sherlock’s neck. Sherlock could feel him smile. “Good,” John said. “Very good.” John wriggled closer and Sherlock felt John’s plumping cock press against him.

Sherlock ran his hand down John’s back, a finger tracing along the vertebrae in his spine. He made an intrigued noise. “I see,” he said. “One of _those_?”

John grinned. “One of _those_.”

Sherlock much preferred _those_ dreams. John no longer had them with the frequency to which he admitted in the past ( _I’ve got the real thing now,_ John explained with a grin), but they still outnumbered the nightmares with a ratio that pleased Sherlock quite a bit. John tended to wake up from _those_ dreams in a rather more amorous mood, and more than once Sherlock found himself barely awake before John’s hands were on him and his mouth was traveling down Sherlock’s body. Sherlock had very little to complain about.

Sherlock pressed his lips against John’s hair, the wild strands tickling at his nose. “I would be very interested in hearing about this dream of yours, John,” he said. He let his hand slip lower on John’s back, sliding just over the curve of his arse. “Was it anything like what we did last night?”

Sherlock felt John’s breathing quicken. Last night had been particularly lovely. Rosie had gone down early and the two tumbled into bed shortly after, a mess of hands and mouths. Sherlock had taken his time, running his tongue over every bit of John’s body, working him open with his fingers, ignoring each one of John’s whispered demands to fuck him until he seemed frantic with need. When Sherlock finally slipped inside, John was wild and open and craving, wrapping himself tightly around Sherlock and moving against him with an urgency that seemed a matter of life or death. Sherlock meant to go slowly even then, but John was wrecked and pleading and Sherlock’s self-control could only be expected to stretch so far. He fucked John so hard the both of them forgot how to breathe, and his hand hardly wrapped around John’s cock before John was convulsing underneath him, barely able to keep himself from screaming. Sherlock followed, wrenched into oblivion by John’s shuddering body. They were both slick, sloppy messes after, hair matted with sweat and panting for air, seeing stars.

“You were inside me,” John said. Sherlock could hear the arousal drip from each of John’s words.

“Mmmm,” Sherlock said, allowing a slight push of his body against John’s. “Very similar to what we did last night, then.” His hand swept down John’s arse, his fingers trailing along his cleft, dipping just a bit deeper. John was still slick with remnants of lubricant and Sherlock’s semen. John let out a soft breath at his touch.

“A few differences,” John said, his voice growing thick. He wrapped a leg around Sherlock’s waist and pushed back—ever so slightly—against Sherlock’s fingers, bringing Sherlock’s touch that much closer to the center of him. “You were behind me, like the first time. You had me up against a wall.”

“Such a lovely way to fuck you,” Sherlock said. Indeed, they had taken advantage of that particular position several times, in several different locations around the flat: in the kitchen, with John’s chest pressed against the table, sending the glassware rattling to the floor; in the shower, practically ripping down the curtain and getting water just about everywhere; once, after a particularly heated cab ride back from a crime scene, just past the front door, John’s trousers barely pulled past his thighs, Sherlock pushing his fingers into John’s mouth to keep him quiet. It was all unspeakably wonderful.

“Any way you fuck me is lovely,” John said, his breaths warm fog against Sherlock’s neck. “The common denominator is you, I’d say. You’re the lovely thing.”

Sherlock’s fingers found John’s hole, warm and a touch swollen from the night before. He traced the ridged perimeter with the pad of his finger, listening to John gasp against him. John was fully erect now, and his hips thrust slightly forward, alternating between shallow pulses of his cock against Sherlock’s hip and his arse against Sherlock’s finger. John’s hand slipped down Sherlock’s back and over his hip. He found Sherlock’s erection and ran a light finger up the length of him—exploratory, teasing.

“Who’s better?” Sherlock asked. “Real me or dream me?”

John hummed, pretending to think. “I suppose the real you has a slight advantage.”

“ _Slight_?”

John grinned. “Slight.”

Sherlock frowned. “That simply won’t do.” He pushed John onto his back, nudging his legs apart and crawling between his thighs.

John laughed, wrapping his arms around Sherlock as Sherlock’s lips found his throat. “Are you jealous of yourself?” John asked. Sherlock could feel John’s smile with his tongue.

“Of course not,” Sherlock said. “Not when I know I can beat him.”

John’s hands roamed down Sherlock’s back, his breath hitching as Sherlock scratched his teeth against his skin just so. “If anybody could outmatch a dream,” John breathed, “it’s you.”

Sherlock moved his mouth down John’s neck. He still tasted of salt, traces of sweat from the night before. Some of the sweat, Sherlock knew, was his own, evidence of the merging of their bodies. Sherlock hoped that if one put a sample of John up to a microscope, at least a third of the cells would be Sherlock’s. Preferably more.

“I like that you dream of me,” Sherlock said.

John tugged at Sherlock’s hair. He lifted Sherlock’s face into his hands, shifting him up his body until the two were eye-to-eye. John’s face was open, loving.

“I’ve dreamed of you since the day we met,” John said.

Sherlock traced the outline of John’s face with his fingertips. He pushed John’s hair off his forehead, his temples. He watched John’s eyes glitter in the morning light and considered that the whole of John was an unspeakably beautiful thing.

“I love you, John Watson,” he said.

A smile spread across John’s face. “And I love you, Sherlock Holmes,” he said. “With everything I’ve got in me.”

Sherlock kissed John’s smile, feeling his lips part but his smile remaining. John wrapped his arms around Sherlock’s shoulders and sighed against him and kissed him with all he had. Sherlock settled himself against John and took him in, tasted him, their bodies pressed flush together, tucked in each other’s limbs. John’s smile was still on his face as they separated, but it had an awed quality to it, as if a part of him had only recently realized he wasn’t still dreaming. Sherlock smiled back, nipping at John’s lower lip.

“Now,” Sherlock said. “About this _slight_ advantage...”

John laughed as Sherlock began to kiss his jaw, his neck, his collarbone.

“I am very much interested in widening that divide,” Sherlock said. He bit at John’s chest. “If at all possible.” He found one of John’s nipples with his tongue, licking over the sensitive flesh until it hardened.

John’s laughs stuttered, turned breathy. His chest heaved against Sherlock’s mouth. “You’re well on your way,” he said.

“Still,” Sherlock said, running his lips along John’s ribcage, “I am receptive to any suggestions you have regarding how I might—”

A staticky cry—sharp and demanding—sounded from the baby monitor.

Sherlock’s head collapsed against John’s stomach. He could feel John giggling against him. He moaned into John’s skin.

The monitor fell silent again and Sherlock lifted his head, raising a finger in the air.

“Wait,” he said. “It could be a false alarm. She does that, you know.”

John lifted his eyes to the air, listening. For a moment, the room was silent. John bit at his lip. He glanced back down at Sherlock. Sherlock smiled, running his hands along John’s stomach, down his sides. He returned his attention to John’s skin.

And Rosie screamed with intent to wake the whole of the building.

John laughed, his head falling back against the pillow. “She’s up,” he said.

“It would appear so,” Sherlock said into John’s stomach.

John ruffled Sherlock’s hair, nudging him. “Budge up,” he said. “I’ve got to get her changed and fed.”

“I’ll get her,” Sherlock said, lifting himself onto all fours over John’s body. “You get in the shower. I’ll get her fed. Then we’ll trade.”

John’s lips quirked into a half-smile. “You sure?”

Sherlock pressed a kiss to John’s lips. “Of course.” He popped off John’s body, searching the room for his pants. They were dangling from a lamp. He pulled them on over his fading erection and set to work looking for a pair of trousers.

John sat up on the bed. He twisted, cracking his back, and looked around at the devastation of their bedroom. “We’d best change these sheets later,” he said.

Sherlock stepped into a pair of pyjama bottoms and narrowed his eyes at John. “I disagree,” he said. “Wholeheartedly.”

John grinned at him. He shook his head. “Dirty man,” he said.

“Very,” Sherlock said. He crawled back onto the bed, pushing John down with a light hand. He sank his mouth onto John’s and felt John’s laughter vibrate against his lips. Sherlock settled on top of John, slotting himself between John’s legs, and they fit—they fit so perfectly together. John held Sherlock’s face in his hands and wrapped his legs around Sherlock’s waist and for a moment they were almost lost again. They were never particularly far from lost.

Rosie screamed.

“Okay,” Sherlock said, forcing himself to separate from John. “Later.”

“Later,” John said, smiling as he propped himself up on the bed.

Sherlock popped into the loo for a quick wash-up before tending to Rosie, and John followed, stretching and turning on the shower. The room filled with steam quickly, and John flashed Sherlock a grin before stepping inside. John moaned as the water hit his skin, and Sherlock could see a sliver of his body through the curtain, his skin going pink and glistening as the water streamed over him. Sherlock felt his cock give a twitch and he shook his head. Later.

There was much to do later. Sherlock would get Rosie up, change her and feed her. After he washed up, the two of them could take her to the park and Sherlock could carry on teaching her to walk. She was catching on quickly. Lestrade would likely be by in the afternoon with something from the considerable stack of cases that piled up during Sherlock’s hiatus. Perhaps Mrs. Hudson could be goaded into babysitting—it never took much convincing—while he and John got into a bit of trouble. And of course, Sherlock had the reputation of his dream self to destroy—he would get John into bed or onto the sofa or over a table and the two would explore each other until they were both shaking from it, taking each other apart with their hands, mouths, bodies. Most importantly, he would wrap his arms around John, pull him close, look into his clear eyes and tell him that he loved him in a way that seemed impossible but was true nonetheless, written in indelible ink across the whole of his life.

For now, Sherlock shut the door to the bathroom, leaving John to hum quietly in the shower ( _before I know it I’m in orbit around you, thanking my lucky stars that I found you_ ), and climbed the stairs to fetch Rosie. He grinned. There was much to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THE END!
> 
> I cannot believe that we're here! A huge, planet-sized thank you to every person who read this fic, especially those who followed along with each chapter and were patient with my angst :) Each kudo and comment and rec/repost made me so unbelievably happy--you guys made writing and posting this thing pure joy.
> 
> Hearts forever and ever,
> 
> Arwa
> 
> Did you know I have a Tumblr? I've kept pretty quiet about it. https://arwamachine.tumblr.com/


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